Interpretation

Lines 1–12: Miguel Ahuata describes the municipio president’s negative reciprocity that offends the priest, and, by extension, the Nahuas. The president refuses to provide the priest with a meal in reciprocation for saying Mass. The president is nowhere to be seen, and the priest waits, he grows hungry, he becomes impatient and he decides to look for the president. He is driven by hunger.

In Huitzilan, the responsibility for feeding the priest as well as paying for the Mass itself actually fell to the Guadalupanas and the Carmelitas, committees of Mestizo women and sometimes Nahua men who performed a number of important functions. The Guadalupanas were the most important committee because they consulted with the priest over who would serve as sponsors (mayordomos) for the upcoming saint’s day celebration.7 Concepción Bonilla, a lineal descendant of Juana Gutierrez and relative of Ponciano Bonilla, was a member of the Carmelitas, and she often provided the priest with a sumptuous meal after Mass, usually consisting of red rice, turkey or chicken mole, beans, and fresh handmade tortillas.

When referring to the president’s refusal to feed the priest for saying Mass, Miguel Ahuata may have had in mind conflicts that arose a few years earlier, which I shall mention following a brief discussion of the main elements of the story.

Lines 13–26: The next day the president engages in negative reciprocity again but now there is a man who stands at the door of the church and listens to the Mass. Miguel Ahuata will gradually identify this man as a rain god (quiyauhteot), by which he means a rain god’s human companion. (See line 142).

Lines 28–62: There is another Mass and no meal, and now the priest is so desperate that he looks for the president in heaven, in the sea, on earth, and in the land of the dead. The man listening to the mass behaves like the rain god’s human companion in Juan Hernández’s story of “The Rain God” in the previous chapter. He does not want to draw attention to himself; he does not enter the church; he is shy and seems like a fool (tonto); he stays back with the fiscales (church officials) at the door of the church; he waits for everyone to leave; and then he remarks to the fiscales that the priest seems unhappy. Eventually he reveals to the fiscales that he knows where the president is.

As mentioned, reluctance to draw attention to oneself is a form of dissimulation in front of priests who, in the past, have suppressed the Nahuas’ belief in rain gods. The rain god in Miguel Ahuata’s story waits to reveal himself after the priest, driven by hunger, is desperate to find the president who has the obligation of providing him with a meal. The alliance between the hungry, suffering priest and the rain god’s human companion is like that between the priest and the Nahuas in Huitzilan; they provide each other with a measure of support.8

Lines 63–146: The fiscales tell the priest that there is someone who knows where the president is and they direct him to enter a room in a house in a clearing in the forest, where he meets the fool. The priest asks the fool to help him find the president. The fool offers to look for twelve men and twelve women—all rain gods—who will go in after the president, who is sitting in a spring. Miguel identifies the men and women as lightning bolts (rayos, line 140) and rain gods (quiyauhteomeh, the plural of quiyauhteot, line 142). The president is in the form of his animal companion spirit (tonal), which is a serpent with twelve mouths, an unmistakable description of an achane or terrestrial water dweller. Miguel Ahuata is one of many narrators in Huitzilan who identified an achane as the animal companion or tonal of a bad-acting municipio president. The twelve male rain gods and the twelve female ones go into the body of the achane, and the fool, who is the thirteenth male rain god, gets them out.

Lines 146–164: The rain gods take the serpent to the church, where it dies, and the priest looks for the president. He finds him dead in his bed because, of course, the fate of one’s companion spirit is the same as the fate of the person to whom the spirit corresponds. By striking and killing the achane, the rain gods kill the president himself. Miguel Ahuata identifies the president as a wealthy Mestizo by revealing that he has the money to pay a woman to wash his clothes (line 150).

Miguel Ahuata used numerology to express the social predicament of the Nahuas in Huitzilan and the challenges they face to change it. He described the rain gods organizing themselves into two groups of twelve to attack one serpent with twelve mouths. The rain gods, like the Nahuas, have numerical superiority, and the serpent with twelve mouths is like the Mestizos, who were relatively few in number but with the capacity to devour (quicua) or dominate the Nahuas. When Miguel Ahuata told his story in 1975, there were ten times the number of Nahuas compared with Mestizos living in Huitzilan (Taggart 1975: 33). However, Miguel Ahuata’s story is a lesson that numerical superiority is not necessarily sufficient to change the balance of power. The two groups of twelve rain gods were not sufficient to kill the hydra-headed serpent; it took a rain god’s human companion to do the job. Miguel Ahuata makes the point that it is necessary to have a good leader to carry out a successful rebellion.

The Immediate Context

There are a number of behaviors that Miguel Ahuata might have had in mind when he told his story about the municipio president who refused to provide the priest with a meal. All involve exercising power. Seemingly insignificant behaviors might seem like minor acts of disrespect, but they reminded the Nahuas of their subordinate status. For example, the municipio president used to give a dinner, as if he were a mayordomo, to take up a collection for the castillo or fireworks display for the patron saint celebration.9 Municipio presidents in Huitzilan were either Mestizos or Nahuas who did the bidding of elite families. When Miguel Ahuata told his story in 1975, Antonio Aco’s son, Adolfo Aco, was municipio president of Huitzilan. Nahua mayodomos, who provided the beautiful but expensive adornments in honor of saints, complained that Adolfo did not reciprocate by hosting dinners to collect money for the castillo. Perhaps equally important, Adolfo Aco did not look for dance groups to participate in the patron saint celebration in August. The dance groups that regularly performed in Huitzilan included the San Migueles, the Quetzales, as well as “los pilatos,” “los españoles,” “los torreadores,” and “los boladores.”10 Despite the municipio president’s failure to recruit them, the San Miguel and Quetzal dancers organized themselves anyway, and appeared on many ceremonial occasions during the calendar year in 1969, when I took detailed field notes on all public rituals that took place in Huitzilan. The two dance groups performed from Santos Reyes on January 611 to the patron saint’s celebration in honor of the Virgen de la Asuncíon, whose day in the Catholic calendar is August 14.12 Nahuas explained that when the president fails to “look for” dancers, the job falls to the tayecanqueh or head of the dance groups. For the San Migueles, the tayecanqueh was the dancer who performed the role of the devil.13 The Nahuas made sure that the San Miguel dancers perform on important ritual occasions because of their link to the rain gods in their community.

Nahua mayordomos compared Adolfo Aco unfavorably with Ponciano Bonilla, a former municipio president whom they praised because he took his responsibilities toward the Nahua mayordomos and ritual dancers more seriously.14 As noted, Ponciano and Antonio Aco were the political representatives of the jefe político, Isidro Grimaldo, and, later, the cacique, Gabriel Barrios in Tetela, who had charge of the Sierra Norte de Puebla following the Mexican Revolution. Adolfo Aco explained to me that he did not host meals to collect money for the castillo because he was occupied with two community projects: the construction of a basketball court and the renovation of the municipal palace. Both projects required a lot of community or faena labor that the municipio president can command from the Nahuas and poor Mestizos without payment.15 In Huitzilan, as in many other places, members of the community are required to donate their labor for community projects. The projects Adolfo Aco initiated did not appeal to the Nahuas because the vast majority of basketball players at that time were Mestizos, and the municipio palace was the seat of that group’s political power.

Digging Deeper

While some Nahuas found Adolfo Aco’s lack of reciprocity to mayodomos who had contributed their resources to saint’s day celebrations very annoying, I do not think that Adolfo’s refusal to hold a dinner to collect money for the castillo fully explains the meaning of Miguel Ahuata’s story. Despite their complaints, Adolfo had a relatively amicable relationship with many Nahuas. He hired many of them to work in his coffee-producing enterprise and drank and joked with them. Some Nahuas complained that he had many children with Nahua women, but when the rebellion broke out two years after Miguel told his story, the UCI did not make Adolfo Aco the focus of their vendettas. He reputedly provided the UCI with ammunition in the hopes that they would help him by carrying out a vendetta against his own Mestizo family.

The Meanings of Negative Reciprocity

There are deeper cultural reasons for fantasizing about killing the animal companion spirit of a president who fails to provide a priest with a meal. One is the meaning that Nahuas attach to reciprocity, which was a basic part of ancient as well as contemporary Nahua ethics and morality. (See Good 2004a). Maffie (2014: 355–356) traced reciprocity in Nahua morality to the ancient concept of nepantlah or nepantah [Nahuat spelling]. Nepantlah, he noted, conveyed “a sense of abundant reciprocity or mutuality; or more precisely, reciprocity or mutuality that consists of a dynamic condition of being, abundantly middle, betwixt and between, or centered.” Among the Nahuas in Huitzilan, nepantah refers to noon, the midway point in the diurnal rotation between the waxing and waning sun. The Nahuas’ use of nepantah is consistent with Maffie’s understanding that to be in a state of centeredness is desirable and to fall out that state is undesirable.16 The midpoint in the sun’s diurnal rotation is desirable, just as is living in a state of balanced reciprocity in the mutual exchange of labor in a marriage, a family, or a community.

Nahuas in Huitzilan have their own way of expressing centeredness by linking work, love, and food. They frequently described the marital relationship as tequipanoa or joining in work.17 The word tequi means “to work,” and nepanoa had social and emotional meaning, such as in the word nenepantlazo[h]talo, which Molina ([1571] 1966: 417) defined as “to love each other” (Maffie 2014: 356). The related word nepantlazohtlalia means “to create bonds of friendship between people.” And nenepanoa is “to get married or join hands” (Maffie 2014: 356).

Nacho defined love (tazohtaliz) as a feeling arising out of cooperation in any form of work.

"If you work well with another person, one loves that person because he or she is doing what I would do but cannot do alone.” (“Cual centequitih, no quitazohta, porque yeh quichiutoc de nen chihuazquia ahmo nihueli.”)18

The verb “to work” (tequi) has a very broad range of meanings and can include any form of human activity from planting a milpa (corn and bean field) and chopping wood to having sex. The broadest interpretation of Nacho’s remark is that those who work together eat, and those who do not work together will starve or struggle to eat. Men and women produced and prepared their meals in a labor-intensive process that required the labor of both members of a married couple. The feeling of love in a married couple or in any relationship changes depending on how well the partners carry out their tasks. Love is a feeling of well-being or centeredness, which can wane when the partners carry out their tasks poorly and wax when they do them well.

In the Nahuas’ theory of emotions, envy is what gets in the way of working together and creating a feeling of love. Nacho described envy (nexicol) as a feeling like hunger.

"Envy is like hunger. One wants something that someone else has. . . . It is like anger. It is bitter, really bitter. One is suffering with something bitter because one does not have what one wants. It is very bitter to realize someone might scold us or be angry with you. You will eat something bitter that makes you suffer because no one loves you.” (“Non no como yezquia non mayana nohon nexicol. Yeh quinequi ma no quipiya . . . Huan nexicolot pos cualayot. Chichic vaya chichic. Chichiccamictoc porque ahmo quitztani. Ten chichiya por cuando cuaticmatiquitocan techahhuatitoqueh o techtahueliztoqueh. En lugar titacuaz ten tichichiccamiqui porque ahmo mitztazohta.”)19

Hunger is a common concern in Huitzilan, and Nahuas, like others in the world (Lutz 1988), express gratitude and love for those who have fed them and kept them alive, particularly during difficult times, and provided them with a sense of well-being. Their term for gratitude, tazohcamatiliz-—a combination of tazohtaliz (love), the infix –ca-, and matiliz, a verbal noun meaning “knowledge of”—conveys this idea. The Nahua Gabriela recalled how she suffered as a child with hunger when her father left her mother for another woman. Gabriela was grateful to her mother for struggling to keep her children alive by earning one liter of corn a day selling food and fodder in a neighboring community. Gabriela expressed anger toward her father, who ceased to work with her mother (tequipanoa) and consequently no longer filled the family granary with corn he grew on his milpa or corn plot. A half-liter (chavo) of corn to make a few tortillas for her family’s evening meal and another half-liter for the morning meal were not enough for a woman and several children. Gabriela summed up what it was like to live without a father’s love: “If you do not have your coffee and tortillas, you’ll be hungry.” (“De ahmo ticpiyaz café huan taxcal, pos ta quipiya mayana.”)20

Learning the Taste of Love and Envy

Nahuas associate in infancy the emotions of love and envy with the flavors of sweetness (tzopec) and bitterness (chichic). A child begins to make the association when weaned around the sixth month of a mother’s next pregnancy. While there is considerable variation in practice, Nahua women said they weaned their nursing children at about that time by rubbing a bitter herb (chichicxihuit) on their nipples to discourage a child from continuing to nurse on the mother’s sweet milk. They said that the mother’s milk now belongs to the child who is in the womb. A weaned child experiences an abrupt transition that involves ceasing to nurse on a mother’s sweet milk, tasting the bitter herb she rubs on her nipples, and moving over to the sleeping mat of the father. The Nahuas attribute sibling rivalry to the envy an older sibling directs toward the younger one who took his or her place at the mother’s breast. Some consider fighting among brothers to be a most glaring form of disrespect because it is a threat to the cooperative relations upon which the welfare of the members of an extended family domestic group depend. A breakdown in those relations can mean hunger.

Food and Love

The relationship between food and love emerged in interviews that I carried out with Nacho and several others Nahuas during the third period of fieldwork. Nacho explained how he felt love when he received food from his now deceased mother:

“[I knew she loved me] because she was waiting for me with my tortillas. She begged me to eat. If I arrived, she'd bend down to say, “Eat while they're hot.” I knew she loved me” (“Porque nechchichixtoya ica notaxcal. Nechtatequihuiltitoya ma nitacua o ahmo. Como niehoc ya, pos ahuetzi, 'Xitacua, mazo totonia.' Nicmatic nechtazohta.”)21

When the relationship of tequipanoa works well in a marriage, the wife is motivated to show love to her husband by preparing his meal in gratitude for his working on his milpa to fill the family granary with corn. The widow Teresa explained how a good marriage works as she recalled her deceased husband:

“Dawn breaks, and one sees him go to work in the fields, and with that a man and wife feel love for each other. The wife is free to wait for her husband with his coffee and make his tortillas for him to dip into his sauce.” (“Taneci imottayohui ton imotta yohui ca non que ma motazohtazqueh. Que no libre quichixtoc ca nicafen huan nitaxcal tapaloco, quichihuilia.”)22

Intentionality (Tequiuh)

Nacho explained that one will be inclined to feel love or envy depending on whether one’s heart is straight or crooked, which determines one’s intentionality (tequiuh). If one is born with or develops a straight heart, then he or she will be inclined to feel love (tazohtaliz) and work well with others. If one has a twisted heart, she or he will be inclined to feel envy (nexicoliz) and will not work well with others and, therefore, will not feel love. The Nahuas, like other autochthonous groups in Mexico (Groark 2008), live in a state of social opacity and must divine, through dreams and by careful observations of behavior, whether the hearts of others are straight or crooked.

The Nahua discourse on love and envy promotes cooperative work relations within the domestic group and discourages going out on one’s own. Nahuas told many stories about envy as a destructive emotion, including tales about the envious dead who return to the land of the living and kill children and adults with envy sickness (nexicolcocoliz). Nahuas said that envious people practice witchcraft themselves or contract witches to carry out acts of witchcraft against those who are the targets of their envy. Envy was so despised that the Nahuas refused to admit that they ever felt it.23

Compadrazgo Rituals

During the third period of fieldwork (2003–2012) after the UCI rebellion had ended, Nacho offered his interpretation of the meaning of the reciprocal exchanges that take place during compadrazgo rituals. Our interview took place on March 17, 2004, after he had described his horrific experiences during the UCI rebellion that ended in the massacre of his wife and several of her sisters and a brother (Taggart 2007). Nacho spoke as he looked at the photographs of compadrazgo rituals I had taken during the first stage of fieldwork in 1968 and 1969. He aimed to explain how his community could heal after splintering during the rebellion.

Nacho described the reciprocal exchange that took place after observing the wedding banquet during the compadrazgo rituals for marriage. As Nacho looked at the pictures of the banquet I had taken many years earlier, he singled out the breaking of the fast during which compadres of the marital couple exchanged their food with one another.

“When they eat, first the comadre begins. She takes a tortilla and she gives one to everyone [sitting around the banquet]. She gives one to all of her companions. It is just a simple tortilla. It does not have any meat. Afterward, once she has given everyone one, then they begin to eat. Then they exchange their meat. The comadre gives to her compadre and the other comadre gives to her compadre. Or they exchange with their godchildren to convey that each one has a big love. This is very clean because what one will eat, I shall eat. And they will eat what I shall eat. This moment is very beautiful.” (“Cuando tacua, primero pehuaz de comadre. Quicuiz ce taxcal, huan nochi quimacaz ce ce. Nochi nicompañeros ce ce quimaca Iuhqui oc. Ahmo quipiya nacat. Zatepan, una vez quitamic ce ce, entonces peuhqueh mocuiliayah para tacuah ya. Entonces pehuah motapaltiliayah ninacauh. De comadre, quimacaya nicompadre, huan occe te comadre quimaca nicompadre. O itocay quitapaltiliaya ihcon para quihtoznequi quipiya ce . . . ne tazohtaliz telcenca huei ya. Telcenca chipahuac porque yeh quicuaz lo que ten nicuazquia. Huan de yeh quicuazquia, pues neh nicuaz. Entonces ye non telcualtzin.”)24

He expanded on the meaning of reciprocity when explaining the exchange of xochicozcat, a long flower-and-bread necklace worn by all of the primary participants in marriage and baptism rituals

“Each one puts on a xochicozcat. [It is a necklace that] has flowers and bread. . . . The flower necklace fastens us together. We see the necklace as making a wheel. We call it a wheel of flowers. Why? Because [it means] our god is circling around us. . . . And we are inside [the circle]. Inside is where we are. When one of our compadres places that flower [necklace] on our necks, it means that we are fastened [together] so that we shall not forget [each other]. May the human goodness between us never end. May we never become disconnected from each other. May we not play with our love. May beautiful thoughts watch over us. May we never forget this love. May we not drift apart. May we not criticize each other. May we not mistreat each other. May we not get angry with each other. Because with this flower [necklace]—How shall I put it?—we shall be connected to our godparents.” (“Quechcuiltia xochicozcat. Quipiya xochit huan quipiya pan. . . . Xochicozcat te tzicoa. Tiquitztoqueh xochicozcat ce rueda quichiutoc. Temaca cuenta que ne rueda huan xochit. Que ye? Porque todios techyahualotoc. . . . Huan tehhan tiyetoqueh taihtic. Taihtic yetoqueh . . . Cuando ce tocompadre tiquechcuiltia ne xochit, que no quihtoznequi timotzicoah ihuan para ahmo queman techilcahua,25 ma ahmo queman tami ne cualtacayot.26 Ma ahmo [macamo] queman timohuehuelocan. Ma [maca] nechipatomotazohtacan. Ma techpihpiyacan cualtzin tanemilil. Ma . . . ahmo queman quelcahua ne nin tazohtaliz . . . [Ma] ahmo para timohuehuelozqueh.27 [Ma] ahmo para timihihtozqueh.28 [Ma] ahmo para timomaltratarozqueh. [Ma] ahmo para timocualantizqueh. Porque non xochit—Que niquihtoz?—tiyectzicozqueh ne topadrino.”)29

The meaning that Nacho attached to the reciprocal exchange of the xochicozcat as a “wheel of flowers” is reminiscent of the significance of the gift of a necklace that Molly H. Bassett (2015: 35) found in the ancient Nahua texts. She wrote: “A necklace serves as the conventional sign of declarations of peace.” She was referring to the necklaces among the gifts that Moteuczoma gave to Cortés. Nacho added Christian imagery when he emphasized goodness, a quality that the friars associated with their god and that was absent in the ancient Nahuas’ notion of teotl. Nacho described how being inside the necklace is to be surrounded by God, fastened to others, enjoying human goodness, respecting the love that one shares with others, never drifting apart from others, avoiding slandering and mistreating others, and getting angry with others.

To engage in negative reciprocity, by refusing to feed the priest in reciprocation for giving Mass, is to create estrangement from others, forget others, criticize others, mistreat others, and get angry with others, all of which are states of being that Nahuas try to avoid, as difficult as that might be. From this perspective, Nahuas in Huitzilan are justified in taking action to prevent negative reciprocity and promote positive reciprocity, including feeding the priest and enacting wedding rituals involving the exchange of xochicozcat.

At the time Miguel Ahuata told this story, he did not have any reason to believe that Nahuas in his community, despite their greater numbers, would be able to punish municipio presidents who practiced negative reciprocity. The municipio president is a symbol of Mestizos who have taken Nahua land and given little in return. The Nahuas in Huitzilan would have to wait until the UCI appeared in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. The following three chapters present stories by narrators who expressed their feelings of revitalization during the first months of the UCI rebellion that began with the invasion of the Talcuaco and Taltempan cattle pastures.