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CHAPTER 1
Performing the Zaachila Word
The Dominican Invention of Zapotec Christianity
David Tavárez
In 1666, almost 100 years after the printing of the first Zapotec doctrinal text, the Dominican Cristóbal de Agüero thought he had at last found a truly persuasive argument for conversion. In that year he published Misceláneo espiritual, a Valley Zapotec work more than 500 pages long. In the introduction (Agüero 1666, A2v), he asserted that this volume, likely compiled with the help of Zapotec assistants, was ticha nallahui, "the word in the middle" or "the communal word." In a flight of fancy that exceeded Baroque exuberance, he also claimed these Christian teachings were ticha Zaachilla, or the word of Zaachila — a pre-Columbian and decidedly pagan Zapotec state.
Four decades later, Agüero's inventive pact with Zapotec history came apart. During the seventeenth century, in spite of Dominican efforts, idolatry transgressions in Oaxaca had emerged both as grave ecclesiastical matters and pitched contests over public order. While a 1660 multiethnic uprising in Tehuantepec had political and economic roots (Zeitlin 2005), Dominican and civil justice inquiries into native devotions triggered two insurrections — a minor one in Zoogocho in 1691 and a riot in San Francisco Caxonos in 1700, which began with the deaths of two Zapotec informants and ended with the execution of fifteen insurrects (Alcina Franch 1993; Gillow 1990). Two years later the Benedictine Ángel Maldonado, bishop of Oaxaca, conducted a painstaking assessment of Dominican evangelization. His 1704–5 initiative, the largest single campaign against idolatry in Spanish America, deeply impacted the Dominicans, as their perceived failures supported Maldonado's request to create new curates for secular clergy — a move that anticipated (Tavárez 2011, 211–22) the crown's decision to transfer all mendicant parishes to secular clergy in 1754 (O'Hara 2010, 55–88; Taylor 1996, 83–86).
On December 7, 1704, the officials of the polity (yeche) of Yalálag in the jurisdiction of Villa Alta in northern Oaxaca presented an idolatry confession, the only one in an indigenous tongue among those submitted by 104 native communities on behalf of 36,400 residents (Chance 1989, 68–69). Maldonado had required that each town present a confession, along with its ritual texts and specialists, in exchange for a general amnesty from idolatry prosecutions. In an unprecedented avowal, Yalálag's authorities admitted dieaggoanettoo Bitao diaca xonee ylao Beta o quiag, "we eat children and make a reverence before deities of stone" (AGI-Mex 882, 750r–54r), confirming received narratives about human sacrifices. This confession was not merely a fulfillment of missionary nightmares, for the confessants also deployed in expert ways the very terms coined in Zapotec doctrinal discourse to name their faithlessness. Indeed, their avowal showcased the retention of ancestral devotions, accompanied by a clever but selective assimilation of Dominican teachings.
This paradox is a suitable point of departure for the history of a vast communal ground in which Zapotec Christianity was manufactured and strategically reconstituted by many actors. This notion of communality is not related to the state of neophytes who avowed they were nepantla, "in the middle," as they followed both Christian and Nahua observances (Durán 1967, vol. 1, 237). To the contrary, this chapter argues for an interpretation of colonial evangelization as a contradictory set of collective processes that, in the yeche of Oaxaca, engulfed missionaries and clergy to a degree similar to (or greater than) the way it did Zapotec actors and which Agüero's "communal word" presciently embraced. This chapter places Dominican evangelization in a comparative context with Franciscan initiatives among the Nahua and outlines three Dominican strategies that shaped a communal ground: the crafting of a Zapotec Christian lexicon that emphasized a rupture with idolatry, the invention of a Zapotec past and cosmology compatible with Christianity, and a focus on singing and performance as self-catechesis.
THE COLONIAL ZAPOTEC CATECHETICAL CORPUS
Beyond the work of New Philologists in Central Mexico (Lockhart 1992; Terraciano 2001) and the pioneering work of Thomas Smith-Stark (1999, 2007, 2008, 2009) on Zapotec linguistics and philology and Javier Urcid (2001) on ancient Zapotec writing, several historians (for instance, Farriss 2014; Oudijk 2008; Oudijk and van Doesburg 2010; Piazza 2016; Romero Frizzi and Vásquez Vásquez 2003; Sousa 2017) and linguists (e.g., Anderson and Lillehaugen 2016; Broadwell 2002, 2015; Foreman and Lillehaugen 2017; Sonnenschein 2005) have engaged in a close historical and philological analysis of a deep colonial archive that contains hundreds of mundane, ecclesiastic, and civil records in Zapotec languages. Three websites have also made an important contribution to Zapotec studies: Oudijk 2015 is a useful online search tool for Juan de Córdova's Spanish-Zapotec dictionary; Oudijk 2016 features transcriptions, and many analytical translations, of most documents in the colonial Northern Zapotec corpus; and Lillehaugen et al. 2016 provides linguistic analyses of Córdova's Zapotec grammar, Levanto's catechism, and colonial Valley Zapotec documents.
This chapter provides a first overview of the colonial Zapotec Christian corpus in its entirety. Colonial Zapotec lexicography primarily addressed three language groupings: two branches, Valley and Northern, and a third, Isthmus, with no coverage of a fourth, Southern Zapotec. The most authoritative colonial Valley Zapotec dictionary and grammar were compiled by the Dominican Juan deCórdova (1578a, 1578b) as a Vocabulario and an Arte, respectively. The only comparative grammar of Valley and Northern Zapotec was Gaspar de los Reyes's 1891 [1704] Gramática, while Juan Martín's (n.d.) Nexitzo Zapotec Bvcabulario was a manual for Spanish speakers. Four manuscripts demonstrate the resourcefulness of Dominicans as grammarians: Alonso Martínez's (1872 [1633]) Manual breve; the eighteenth-century Arte de Lengua Zapoteca (n.d.), attributed to Leonardo de Levanto; the anonymous 1793 Quaderno de Ydioma Zapoteco del Valle (n.d.); and Juan Francisco Torralba's 1800 Arte Zaapoteco. Finally, Antonio Peñafiel (1981 [1886]) published an anonymous grammar, along with a grammatical treatise by Andrés Valdespino.
Table 1.1 lists fourteen extant catechetical sources, excluding grammars and dictionaries, all authored by Dominicans except for Pacheco de Silva's Doctrina. The earliest and most influential source was Pedro de Feria's 1567 Doctrina; as we have seen, Agüero's 1666 Misceláneo was an encyclopedic imprint. The only catechism published in a Northern Zapotec variant, Nexitzo, was FranciscoPacheco de Silva's 1687 Doctrina, reprinted in 1689, 1752, and 1882. Two eclectic manuscripts recorded prayers, sermons, and examples. Parábolas, a remarkable collection of sermons and moral examples, is attributed to Pedro de la Cueva (n.d.). Hispanic Society of America NS 3–27 (henceforth HSA Gramática) contains Rosary songs, a confessional guide, the Athanasian Creed, the Rosary prayer known as camándula, and nineteen sermons. While one section, a Zapotec grammar, is attributed to Antonio del Pozo, the authorship of other sections is unclear. Leonardo de Levanto's 1766 Cathecismo, printed in 1766 but with licenses granted in 1732, contains a catechism, an extended catechetical dialogue, and Rosary songs. Arte en lengua zaapoteca del balle, a Valley Zapotec anonymous grammar, catechism, and confessional sketch, also survives. Lastly, Peñafiel (1981) published alongside an anonymous grammar Antonio Vellón's early nineteenth-century confessional manuals, Confesionario en zapoteco del valle (Valley Zapotec) and Confesionario en lengua zapoteca de Tierra Caliente, o de Tehuantepec (Isthmus Zapotec), and an early manuscript preserved by Wichells.
Dominicans maintained a tripartite focus: basic catechesis and preaching, represented by about sixty-five extant sermons (about thirty-eight printed in Feria 1567); eighty-seven exemplary narratives (sixteen published by Agüero); and self-catechesis, sustained through ninety brief Marian songs (thirty-eight of them printed). As suggested by the size of this corpus and its reliance on manuscripts, an important tension existed between Dominican determination to create a devotional literature and the availability of printed works and missionaries fluent in indigenous languages. In 1571, for thirty-three Oaxacan parishes, only thirty-two ministers and seven ecclesiastics at the cathedral knew indigenous languages; most knew Nahuatl, and fourteen knew some Zapotec (García Pimentel 1904, 95–97; for a full discussion, see van Doesburg 2013).
Dominican authors and their indigenous coauthors might have shared a sense of what constituted a compelling rhetorical performance. Nevertheless, no colonial examples of rhetorical devices deployed by Zapotec writers survive other than ritual songs devoted to ancestors and deities (Tavárez 2006, 2008, 2011) and the rhetoric employed in close to 600 extant colonial petitions, letters, and wills in Zapotec. Nancy Farriss (2014, 78, 98) argued that since Dominican Zapotec texts frequently employed devices present in other Mesoamerican oral genres — morphological, syntactic, and semantic parallelism — these features must be based in preconquest Zapotec oratory. Farriss's exemplary work has shown the way for further research on rhetorical devices and metaphors in Valley Zapotec doctrinal texts. Following this lead, my chapter takes a step towards a more thorough comparison of pastoral literature with texts written by Zapotec ritual specialists, and sketches a few possibilities for the large mundane text corpus.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF ZAPOTEC CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The Dominicans' regimented approach to catechesis in Central Mexico echoed the focus on close scrutiny of translation and orthodox use of Scripture mandated by the Council of Trent (1545–63). Hence, major sixteenth-century catechetical works by New Spain Dominicans communicated Christian teachings through carefully ordered schema and presented biblical teachings indirectly, through narrative preaching. The Zapotec Doctrina by Feria (1567, 11v–12v) followed this trend through an orderly presentation of ticha nalij, "true words," into "five capital sayings" (cayo quiquie ticha). Remarkably, it listed in first place not the canonical prayers but the Fourteen Articles of the Faith (chitaa xibaa); afterward came the Apostle's Creed and then the Pater Noster, Hail Mary, and Salve Regina. Since there was little innovation in the Valley Zapotec catechetical vocabulary after Feria, his Doctrina established the canonical words Zapotecs were to perform to be counted as Christian. Credit for this achievement also belongs to Bernardo de Albuquerque, bishop of Oaxaca in the period 1562–79, as in his prologue Feria (1567, iii, v) indicated that his work was assisted by "the doctrina that Your Excellency [Albuquerque] made in that same Zapotec language."
Albuquerque's and Feria's seminal catechism did venture references to Zapotec beliefs that bore parallels with Christian ones. This refashioning was congruent with Bartolomé de las Casas's (1967, 539) opinion that all peoples had access to God and natural knowledge and that pagan practices were imperfect forms of Christian ones. Both Feria and the 1548 Dominican Nahuatl Doctrina cautiously engaged with native cosmologies by deploying native terms for a Christian universe. A division into Sky, Earth, and Underworld was an important feature of Zapotec cosmology. Until the eighteenth century, Northern Zapotecs employed the biyee, a 260-day divinatory count that merged time with space by associating each of twenty 13-day periods with three cosmological regions: yoo yeche lao yoo (Earth), yoo yebaa (Sky), and yoo cabilla (Underworld; Tavárez 2011, 196–97). Dominicans borrowed these names to describe Sky as a quehui lani quiebaa, or "palace inside the sky," while humans lived in "the community (on) Earth" (yeche lao yoo, queche layoo).
A comparison of Zapotec translations with those employed in Nahuatl reveals crucial divergences, particularly regarding sin, the Devil, and idolatry. In Nahuatl, the Devil was designated with a sorcerer's title, tlacatecolotl, "human horned owl" (as translated inBurkhart 1989, 41), while Dominicans boldly selected Bezelao, ruler of the Zapotec Underworld (Smith-Stark 1999), as a referent for the Devil. Bezelao remained a bivalent term bridging two cosmologies, and its constant recurrence in catechesis allowed Zapotecs to engage with him as both Devil and deity.
While "sin" in Nahuatl became tlahtlacolli, something damaged or off-balance (Burkhart 1989, 28–29), this concept was translated into Zapotec through four terms: to(l)la, tee, quia, and xihui. While any preconquest semantic link among these terms is not well documented, Córdova (1578b, 254r, 102v, 116v, 305v) glossed the first three as "guilt," xihui as "injury" or "suspicion" (234v, 387v), "evil" as tee or tola, and "iniquity" as quia or tee (see also Schrader-Kniffki and Yannakakis 2014). Tola originally referred to a preconquest Zapotec ceremony that Dominicans identified as a practice resembling Christian confession (see also Madajczak's chapter, this volume). As Córdova (1578b, 228v) observed, penitents twisted strands from a plant called tòla into short rope lengths, which they placed before a ritual specialist as depictions of their transgressions (Burgoa 1989 [1674], vol. 2, 228–31).
A remarkable characteristic of Feria's Doctrina (figure 1.2) is its sustained focus on a denunciation of Zapotec idolatry, in contrast with the occasional treatment of this topic in Dominican catechesis in Nahuatl — as in the 1548 Dominican Doctrina or in Domingo de la Anunciación's 1565 Doctrina. Feria's (1567, 69v, 65r) translation for idolatry was memorable: "the manufacture and the teachings of stone deities and wooden deities" (quela huezaa, quela huecete bitoo quie, bitoo yàga). This phrase demarcated a line between an idolatrous past and a Christian present and used an important Zapotec verbal derivational process to ridicule the ancestors for heeding the teachings of false gods. Feria's translation departed significantly from the Nahuatl rendering of "idolatry" as "following something as a deity" (tlateotoquiliztli) and placed a greater emphasis on idolatry than did his correligionaries in their Nahuatl Doctrina (Dominican Order 1550, 124v, 128v, 130r, 145r). Feria's references to stone and wood were rooted in Isaiah 40:18–20, 44: 9–20, Jeremiah 10:1–5, and Habakkuk 2:18–19, which mocked idolaters' wishes to fashion stone and wood into deities (Halbertal and Margalit 1992). Feria also argued that the epidemics that decimated the natives were God's punishment for idolatry, in which he behaved as a husband forced to discipline his unfaithful wife, thus echoing the denunciation of Israel as God's unfaithful consort in Ezekiel 16:27–30 and Hosea 1:1–2.
FROM AQUINAS TO GRANADA: FERIA'S SEAMLESS TRANSLATION PROJECT
Through the deployment of adaptations of the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Luis de Granada, Feria embraced a daring approach to catechesis that departed from the more orthodox work of Nahuatl-speaking Dominicans and shared similarities with the strategies of early Dominicans in Highland Maya communities (Sparks 2014) and also with those of the Franciscans of Central Mexico. Feria's discussion of idolatry stands out as a sophisticated narrative that worked at two levels. For neophytes, it was a seamless account of idolatry's origins; for Dominicans in the know, it distilled into Zapotec the opinions of the influential Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas without crediting its source (for a detailed discussion of Feria's doctrine on the origins of idolatry, see Tavárez 2017.)
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