Interpretation

Miguel Fuentes declared that the action in his story took place on April 24 (line 4). He was referring to the April before I recorded his story in the winter of 1978, which would make the date April 24, 1977, several months before the Nahuas organized the UCI. The UCI invaded the cattle pastures of Talcuaco and Taltempan around December 12, 1977, the date in the Catholic calendar commemorating the Virgin of Guadalupe and the time when Nahuas prefer to plant their winter crop of corn to reap their harvest in late spring.

The Nahuas in the UCI established, around that time, their headquarters in a house above the Talcuaco pasture. In that house lived a Nahua man married to the Nahua woman whom the son of an elite family actually kidnapped around April 24, 1977. This information emerged in a narrative I shall call “The Kidnapped Wife” that I recorded in 2007, in which the narrator provided a detailed account of an event that gave support to fears in the years leading up to the UCI rebellion that a rich and powerful Mestizo man who desired any Nahua woman might take her by force, even if she were married. In the account of “The Kidnapped Wife” appearing below, I used pseudonyms for the people the narrator mentioned in order to protect innocent family members who might be subject to reprisals. I call the kidnapper Coyot, after the term coyot (coyote) that Nahuas in Huitzilan use to refer to Mestizos whom they do not respect. I call the Nahua wife’s husband “the UCI.”

“There were Coyot and the deceased UCI and his wife. The UCI—How shall I put it?—had some sort of problem with his wife. She left him and came down from Talcuaco and went into Coyot’s house [to work as a domestic servant]. So then Coyot, as for what he did, he grabbed that woman and went and put her in another house. Here in the place called Taltzintan. Where only he would find her. As for what the UCI did, . . . he grabbed his wife and took her back home. So then Coyot decided to hire another razón, and they went to face that woman. The woman was lying [in bed] with the UCI [her husband], and they made her get up and carried her away. Afterwards, I do not know how, but the UCI took the woman back again. The UCI had a problem [with Coyot] because of the bad things that he and the other razón had done. And the other razón was a gunman and he worked for the rich ones [such as Coyot], so he did what Coyot wanted him to do. After the UCI came [organized] and . . . they armed themselves, the razón fled from the community.” (“Bueno como yetoya, nihin Coyot huan ne UCI catca, huan icihuauh. Nihin UCI—queniuh [niquihtoa]?—quipiyac ce problema ihuan nicihuauh. Quicauh huan mocalaquico cihuat ichan Coyot. Tons Coyot den quichihuac, quicuic in cihuat huan yahque tapalcahua ta tech ce calli. Nican Taltzinta. Para ompa zayoh cahciti. Den quichihuac UCI, . . . quicuic in cihuat huan mocuiac ichan. Entonces nin Coyot, quinemili quitaquehuac nin razón, huan yahqueh quixtitoh in cihuat. Huetztoya cihuat ihuan UCI huan quiehuatoh cihuat huan cualiqueh. Zatepan ahmo nicmati quenin, quenin occeppa para occeppa cuiac in cihuat. Que yeh ca nohon problema porque ya nin mal de quichiuhqueh. Y razón o quipiya pistolero ihuan rico, entonces quitacamachia3 que yeh quinequi. . . . Zatepan de que calaquih ya in UCI’s, huan . . . moarmatih ya, entonces yeh choloh ya.”)4

No Recourse

At the time of the kidnapping, estimated to be around April 24, 1977, Coyot’s relative was the municipio president, and neither the Nahua wife nor her husband could file a complaint in Huitzilan and expect to get results. There was bad blood between the municipio president, on the one hand, and Coyot and his father, on the other, but elite Mestizos tended to close ranks and support each other in conflicts with Nahuas. Not everyone in Coyot’s extended family, however, approved of his behavior. A woman who was one of Coyot’s relatives told me he had made prejudiced and derogatory comments about Nahuas, whom he called Nacos, which is short for Totonacos and a racial slur. An elite woman, who married into Coyot’s extended family, turned a cold shoulder to him when she found out about the kidnapping episode.

Narrators recast the kidnapping into the story of “Malintzin” in several clever ways. They specified that the serpent, which coiled itself around Malintzin and pulled her into the water, came from the house of the devil or ahmo cualli. This is an allusion to Coyot and his father, with whom the Nahuas had many quarrels prior to and during the UCI rebellion. Nahuas frequently described the devil as a coyot or Mestizo wearing store-bought clothes and riding a horse, both of which fit the description of Coyot and his father. They recast the UCI’s wife going to work as a domestic servant to help care for Coyot’s children as Malin, bending down to pick up and comfort what she thought was an infant. The narrator of “Malintzin” turned the experience of the UCI’s wife being dragged out of her marital bed as Malintzin having a serpent coil around her neck and drag her into the water.

Sex with the Devil

The story of “Malintzin” struck a chord with many Nahuas in Huitzilan and circulated widely in 1978 among narrators in Ixtahuatalix as well as in Calyecapan. The Ángel Hernández brothers in Calyecapan, who were among the narrators who told “Malintzin,” also told an Orpheus myth that warned Nahua women against becoming involved with wealthy Mestizo men. In one particular variant of Orpheus, the devil appears as a Mestizo mounted on a horse, and carries a married woman to the underworld. The Mestizo turns into a goat and devours the woman’s body, leaving her heart to palpitate and flip around on the floor of their cave until it regenerates into the woman, who is doomed to undergo the same experience, presumably for eternity. The purpose of this Orpheus story is to teach Nahua women to fear Mestizo men who may offer them money for sex. The Orpheus story also justifies why Nahuas carry out their betrothal and marriage rituals with an adornment called the flower tree or xochicuahuit. [See photograph 9.1.] During the last stage of fieldwork, Nacho’s niece explained the purpose of the flower tree ritual by remarking: “The goat will eat whomever does not marry with a flower tree.” (“Aqui ahmo monamictiz ica xochicuahuit quicuaz chivo.”) She was referring to the goat that devours the married woman in the Orpheus myth. The flower tree or xochicuahuit is a ritual adornment with a handle and three sticks of wood for placing alternating combinations of flowers and bread. The climactic moment in the xochicuahuit ritual is the performance of the dance of four or nanahuin, who are the bride, the groom, and the godmother and godfather of marriage, each holding a xochicuahuit. The intermediary or cihuatanque weaves incense around the four dancers to create a web of love and respect.

The flower tree rituals and the Orpheus myth were around long before the actual kidnapping of the Nahua wife in April 1977. I witnessed the rituals in 1968, and recorded an Orpheus myth from Nacho Ángel Hernández in 1970 and transcribed it several years later. The existence of the rituals and the story at that time in Huitzilan are an indication that Nahuas have regarded Mestizos as a threat to Nahua women prior to the kidnapping that took place around April 24, 1977.

Violation of Professed Values

The legend of “The Kidnapped Wife” describes a violation of “professed values” (Scott 1985: 336) regarding marriage held by Mestizos as well as Nahuas in Huitzilan, who expressed their understanding of respect in their compadrazgo rituals. (See Chapter 5.) Mestizo and Nahua men alike did not condone other men having sex with their wives. When I returned for the third stage of fieldwork, years after the UCI rebellion had ended, an elite woman, who had married into Coyot’s extended family, said to me: “We made some mistakes.” She was alluding to Coyot kidnapping the Nahua woman as well as to Coyot’s father allegedly calling in the army to burn down the UCI’s corn field on Talcuaco, which I shall discuss in a later chapter.

Mestizo and Nahua men sometimes displayed a double standard in Huitzilan by guarding the marital chastity of their own wives while having sex with other women. The Nahua women I knew, however, objected strongly to a straying husband because it undermined the relationship of tequipanoa or reciprocity in work. Nahua men expressed more tolerance of Mestizo men married to Mestizo women and involved with Nahua women in long-term relationships. One example is Ponciano, who had several common-law Nahua wives with whom he had children. Nahuas I knew declared that he conducted himself with less wanton promiscuity and more respect than did many other Mestizos. The children of Ponciano and his Mestizo and Nahua partners recognize each other as siblings, although those born to Ponciano’s Mestiza wife refer to their siblings born to Nahua women with their mother’s surnames. Those siblings include Juan Pereañez—Nacho Ángel Hernández’ father-in-law—and Manuel Mina, the maternal half brother of my compadre of baptism, Juan Gravioto. Juan Gravioto spoke well of Ponciano, saying that he treated him fairly by selling him some land at a fair price.

A Direct Connection to the UCI Rebellion

The events recorded in “The Kidnapped Wife” were among the reasons that the Nahua husband joined the small contingent of Nahuas who went to the neighboring community of Pahuata where the UCI were attempting to organize Nahuas to invade intestate pastures. He and the others invited the UCI organizer, Felipe Reyes Herrera, to come to Huitzilan. Felipe obliged, and, as mentioned, the Nahua husband lent his house to be the headquarters of the UCI rebellion. The UCI placed a loudspeaker on the roof of his house, from which Felipe Reyes Herrera broadcast his speeches threatening “death to the ricos” directly into the kidnapper’s house below. The husband became one of UCI’s leaders and continued in this role after the death of Felipe Reyes Herrera in approximately 1979. With the support of the rebels, the UCI allegedly shot Coyot in the stomach. Coyot survived, but the UCI reputedly burned down his house and drove him from Huitzilan, and he has not returned.

The next chapter presents a second event that contributed directly to other Nahuas taking the risky step of joining the UCI. That event involved another parcel of land that a wealthy Mestizo had seized from a Nahua under conditions that both Nahuas and other Mestizos considered to be unfair. At the conclusion of the next Chapter I shall offer a hypothesis on the role that stories of “The Kidnapped Wife” and “Malintzin” and those of the seized land parcel played in creating the necessary conditions for the UCI rebellion.