Cahpter 4 - Foundational Arts Mural Painting and Missionary Theater in New Spain

Foundational Arts
Foundational Arts
Mural Painting and
Missionary Theater
in New Spain
Michael K. Schuessler
tucson
The University of Arizona Press
© 2013 The Arizona Board of Regents
All rights reserved
www.uapress.arizona.edu
This book is a translation, with modifications, of Artes de fundación: Teatro evangelizador
y pintura mural en la Nueva España, by Michael K. Schuessler. © Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, México, DF, 2009. The book was translated by Leonardo
Martínez Vega and Michael K. Schuessler. Translation was made possible by Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Cuajimalpa.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schuessler, Michael Karl, author, translator.
[Artes de fundación. English]
Foundational arts : mural painting and missionary theater in New Spain / Michael K.
Schuessler.
pages cm
“This book is a translation, with modifications, of Artes de fundación: Teatro
evangelizador y pintura mural en la Nueva España, by Michael K. Schuessler.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 8165-2988-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Indians of Mexico—Missions—History—16th century. 2. Theater—Religious
aspects—Catholic Church—History. 3. Religious drama—History—16th century.
4. Mural painting and decoration, Mexican—16th century. 5. Arts and religion—
Mexico—History—16th century. 6. Catholic Church—Mexico—History—16th
century. 7. Evangelistic work—Mexico—History—16th century. I. Martínez Vega,
Leonardo, translator. II. Title.
F1219.3.M59S3413 2014
201'.67—dc23
2013015659
Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent
endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.
Manufactured in the United States of America on acid-free, archival- quality paper

containing a minimum of 30% post- consumer waste and processed chlorine free.
18 17 16 15 14 13 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my professors
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction. Texts and Contexts: “Bookish Architecture,”

Mural Painting, and Theatricality in Colonial Mexico 3
1. Toward a Literature of Foundations 30
2. Renascent Genres in New Spain 58
3. Iconography and Evangelization 90
4. The Last Judgment: Mural Painting and Missionary Theater 124
Appendix. The Last Judgment 159

Notes 177
Bibliography 207
Index 217
vii
Illustrations
1a. Franciscan monastery of San Andrés Calpan, Puebla.

Façade of the posa chapel that depicts the Last Judgment. 6
1b. Engraving from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. 7
2a. Saint Augustine. Detail of a mural painting cycle
in the Augustinian monastery of San Nicolás de Tolentino,
Actopan, Hidalgo. 8
2b. Frontispiece of the Crónica del glorioso padre y doctor
de la Yglesia Sant Agustín, Seville, 1551. 9
2c. Engraving from the book Crónica de San Agustín y de los
santos y doctors de su orden, Seville, 1551. 10
3a. Detail from the ceiling of the cloister’s ante-refectory
in the Augustinian monastery of San Agustín de Acolman,
Estado de México. 12
3b. Frontispiece from Alonso de Molina’s Confessionario breve,
en lengua mexicana y castellana, Mexico City, 1569. 13
4. Porziuncola of the Franciscan monastery of San Miguel,
Huejotzingo, Puebla. 14
5. General view of the open chapel located in the esplanade
of the Augustinian monastery of San Nicolás de Tolentino,
Actopan, Hidalgo. 18
6a. Frontispiece of the Dialectica resolutio cum textu Aristotelis,
Mexico City, 1554. 22
6b. Detail of the mural painting cycle at the Franciscan
monastery of San Miguel Zinacantepec, Estado
de México. 23
7. The Nahua goddess Cihuacoatl. 24
ix
x · Illustrations
8. General view of the mural painting cycle located in the

sotocoro of the Augustinian monastery at San Miguel,
Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. 25
9. General view of the mural painting cycle whose theme
is the Last Judgment. Open chapel located in the esplanade
10. Engraving included in Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica
Christiana, Perugia, 1579. 66
11. Engraving included in Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica
Christiana, Perugia, 1579. 67
12. “Tlacuilo,” Florentine Codex, México, 1576. 77
13. Hans Holbein, “The City of God,” engraving included
in Icones historiarum veteris testamenti, 1549. 81
14. Juan Gersón, “The City of God,” painted vault
(on amatl paper) in the sotocoro of the Franciscan
monastery of San Francisco Tecamachalco, Puebla, 1562. 82
15. Detail of the “Warrior” taken from the mural cycle located
in the nave of the church at the Augustinian monastery
of San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. 83
16. Detail from the sacristy of the Augustinian monastery
17. Façade of the church of the Augustinian monastery
18. Detail from the Tlatelolco Codex, 1562. 102
19. Detail of the tondos and acanthus leaves from the mural
cycle located in the nave of the church at the Augustinian
monastery of San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. 105
20. Detail of the “Centaur” from the mural cycle located
in the Augustinian monastery of San Miguel Arcángel,
Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. 106
21. Two pages of Ovid’s La metamorphose figurée, Lyon,
1557. 107
22. Detail of the Augustinian emblem taken from the
frontispiece of the Recognitio Summularum Reverendi
Patris Illdephonsi a Vera Cruce, Mexico City, 1554. 108
Illustrations · xi
23. Detail of Niccoló Malermi’s Biblia Italica, Venice, 1490. 112

24. Warrior trapped in an acanthus vine. Detail of the mural
painting cycle in the nave of the church at the Augustinian
monastery of San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. 115
25. Detail of the Relación de Martín del Toro, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. 117
26. Detail of the “Dragon” from the mural cycle located
in the nave of the church at the Augustinian monastery
27. Instruments of infernal torture. Detail of the mural
program located in the open chapel of the Augustinian
monastery of San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. 143
28. An Indian who worshipped his ancient gods.
Detail of the mural program executed in the open chapel
29. Indian woman. Detail of the mural program executed
in the open chapel of the Augustinian monastery
of San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. 149
30. Three levels of the pictorial program executed
in the open chapel at the Augustinian monastery
of San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. 153
Foundational Arts
Introduction
Texts and Contexts

“Bookish Architecture,” Mural Painting,
and Theatricality in Colonial Mexico
I made a vaulted church in the monastery of Santiago Tlatelolco . . . and

an altarpiece, one of the best in the Indies, without having Masters . . .
but on my own, and in order to succeed, I had to study Architecture in
depth, which the Lord taught me, without having studied or known about
it, or having learned from the Masters, who usually teach it, but through
Books on the subject.
—Fray Juan de Torquemada, General and First Prologue
of the Indian Monarchy
A detailed look at the development of a unique early Indo- Christian liter-

ary expression reveals a close relationship between the dramatic and plas-
tic arts, a cultural and generic syncretism that began in the second decade
of the sixteenth century.1 As a result of the unexpected encounter between
two cultures and the gradual synthesis of two representative and ideologi-
cal traditions, the genesis of what might be considered “Indo- Christian
literature” is to be found in a hybrid discourse that makes its debut in a
number of dramatic works that, despite their theatrical nature, have not
been considered “literary” in the canonical sense. Such works represent a
mode of expression that, although having emerged during the process of
Mexico’s conquest and subsequent colonization, is based on the Indian
ideographical tradition combined with the phonological system employed
by most European languages, including the Spanish brought by the Con-
quistadors. In order to enhance our understanding of this hybrid discourse,
which is to be found in the first texts produced during the colonization of
Mexico, and to thus generate a more detailed understanding of a funda-
mental aspect of the evolution of what I have chosen to call Indo- Christian
literature, it is helpful to deploy a comprehensive analytical instrument
3
4 · Introduction
such as the notion of “colonial semiosis” originally proposed by Walter

Mignolo.2
Given that this discursive hybridity, or mestizaje, builds a visible
bridge between two systems of cultural representation, one of the objec-
tives of my research has been the systematic analysis of this process in
order to create an adequate vocabulary and methodology to describe it.3
From this perspective, the literature of New Spain, as the hybrid expres-
sion it embodies, and despite what is commonly assumed, did not begin
with Hernán Cortés’s Letters from Mexico but with the extraordinary,
although ephemeral, artistic and dramatic products born from the en-
counter between the Nahuas and Spaniards, within the framework of
what Robert Ricard, reviving an expression coined in the early sixteenth
century by Fray Toribio de Benavente, also known as Motolinia, has
called the “spiritual conquest” of Mexico.4 In The Nahuas after the Con-
quest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Mexico, Sixteenth
through Eighteenth Centuries, James Lockhart qualifies this concept
while pointing out that during the first phase of the conquest, there was
relatively little contact between different ethnic groups outside a strictly
evangelistic context. From this one may gather that the iconographic
production of the so- called spiritual conquest arose from the joint ef-
forts of European friars and Indian artists during the construction and
ornamentation of religious spaces designed and built in New Spain
on the heels of the conquest, under the direction of friars belonging
to various monastic orders, particularly Franciscans, Dominicans, and
Augustinians.
This phenomenon finds a parallel expression in the iconographic pro-
grams painted on the walls of the vast majority of monasteries built during
this period. Until now, only a limited number of the illustrated books that
the friars used to guide their Indian catechumens have been identified,
and this (albeit limited) information has provided a better understanding
of the way in which the Indian artist—or tlacuilo, in Nahuatl—reinterpreted
these iconographical contexts.5 Of course, most of the texts and their cor-
responding illustrations, which provided the thematic and structural basis
for the genesis of mural painting in New Spain and occasionally for the
monasteries’ architectural design, were those that the monks found most
appropriate (and available) in order to carry out their enormous evangelistic
undertaking. Consequently, the models that the tlacuilos copied, elaborated
on, and inevitably reinterpreted in order to encourage the dissemination
of a new faith among the natives were primarily religious in scope and in-
cluded illustrated Bibles, catechisms, books of hours, and so on. However,
Texts and Contexts · 5
it should be acknowledged that the friars, in their zeal to indoctrinate their

native congregation, also employed a small number of secular publications,
which included treatises on the liberal arts and classical texts, in addition
to manuals of calligraphy and medicine, and even theological summae for
the education of children, such as the Margarita philosophica.6 However,
religious publications were not the only models employed as a source of
iconographic material and their subsequent reproduction both in architec-
ture and in mural painting; the friars (and the tlacuilo neophytes whose
work they supervised) made use not only of European sources, but of
Indian ones as well, in order to represent certain aspects of the new faith
in a way that would be more comprehensible to the recently subjugated
population.
Consequently, in this book I consider the development of only a few of
the architectural programs and pictorial compositions created by Indian
artists during the first century after the conquest. These works document
an exceptional facet of the initial interpretation and ensuing iconographic
production born from the meeting of two cultures that, before 1519, as far
as Mesoamerica was concerned, were utterly unaware of one another.
These iconographical and ideological achievements are naturally of a doc-
trinal nature, and the monasteries, with their open and processional cha-
pels, atrial crosses, altarpieces, and statuary, created by Indian artists under
the auspices of European friars, are also silent witnesses to this phenom-
enon that, through a rigorous iconographical exegesis, may be “re-read”
as the recreation of the literary texts that invariably inspired and informed
them.
Therefore, as previously noted, the basis of these architectural and artis-
tic programs, especially their textual and plastic inspiration, is to be found
almost exclusively in the illustrated books imported to New Spain by friars
belonging to various religious orders. Several of these works were brought
by missionaries such as Pedro de Gante, a Flemish Franciscan who was
the first educator of Mexican Indians and founder of the influential school
of mechanical arts at the monastery of San José de los Naturales, located
in Tlatelolco, near Tenochtitlan, the capital of New Spain and the con-
quered Mexica empire. Other books to be employed in this iconographic
process were subsequently published in New Spain upon the introduction
of the printing press in Mexico in 1539.7 As shall be seen, despite the forty
years that had elapsed since the conquest of Mexico, one may consider
concrete and extant examples of these Mexican iconographic programs
as early, and perhaps foundational, examples of what I have chosen to call
“bookish architecture” and mural painting. This phenomenon may be
6 · Introduction
clearly perceived in the façade of one of the four processional chapels

erected in the atrium of the Franciscan monastery at Calpan, Puebla (be-
gun approximately in 1548), whose iconographic inspiration, according to
art historian Manuel Toussaint, was provided by an illustration taken from
the Flos Sanctorum (1521), here a representation of the Last Judgment.
Regarding its appearance in New Spain, John McAndrew points out that
this engraving was reproduced many times in this popular work which
documents the lives of the Saints, a book imported to Mexico en masse
because it was an obligatory volume for the incipient libraries of the Fran-
ciscan order (figures 1a, b). Another example of “bookish architecture” is
to be found in one of the mural programs executed at the Augustinian
monastery at Actopan, Hidalgo (completed ca. 1570), which includes the
artistic representation of the order’s most revered members in black and
white. In this case, its textual source has been attributed to two printed
Figure 1a. Franciscan monastery of San Andrés Calpan, Puebla. Façade of a pro-
cessional chapel (posa) in which the Last Judgment is represented in bas-relief.
Figure 1b. Reproduction of an engraving of the same apoca-

lyptic subject, from the Flos Sanctorum (Zaragoza, 1521), ap-
parently a variation on the original image first included in the
Nuremburg Chronicle, published in Germany in 1493. This
engraving or another of the same kind may have inspired the
decoration of this processional chapel at Calpan.
sources: the Chronicle of the Glorious Saint Augustine, Father and Doctor
of the Church, by Alonso de Orozco, an illustrated book printed in Seville
in 1551 (with regard to the architectural border framing the figures, it re-
produces the first edition of Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brief Account of the
Destruction of the Indies, published in Seville in 1554 [figures 2a, b, c]);8
8 · Introduction
Figure 2a. San Nicolás Actopan, Hidalgo. Detail of a mural

painting representing Saint Augustine, founder of the order,
from the monastery’s staircase; according to Santiago Sebastián,
it is likely to have been inspired by the illustrated book.
and the vault of the Augustinian monastery at Acolman, state of Mexico

(finished ca. 1560), where a monogram of Christ was copied from the fron-
tispiece of the Confessionario mayor en lengua mexicana y castellana (Greater
Confessional in the Mexican and Castilian Languages), a work by the first
Spanish expert in Nahuatl culture, Alonso de Molina, published in Mexico
in 1569 (figures 3a, b).9
Based on the new cultural and political reality that emerged from the
aesthetic, ideological, and practical aspects of New Spain’s colonization by
the Spanish, I have coined the term “bookish architecture” to describe the
Figure 2b. Crónica del glorioso padre y doctor de la Yglesia
Sant Agustín, y de los santos beatos y de los doctores de su orden
(Chronicle of the Glorious Father and Doctor of the Church
Saint Augustine and of the Saints, Blessed Brothers, and Doc-
tors of His Order), published in Seville in 1551. The architec-
tural border that frames the figures was used again in several
printed editions of the period, for example, in the first edition
of Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción
de las Indias (A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies),
published in Seville in 1554.
10 · Introduction
Figure 2c. Detail of an engraving found in the Crónica de San

Agustín y de los santos y doctors de su orden, 1551 (Chronicle of
Saint Augustine and of the Saints and Doctors of His Order),
edited by Alonso de Orozco (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria
Española & Universidad Pontifi cia de Salamanca, 2001).
inspiration of some of the monastic structures built to Christianize

the recently conquered territories. An example of this phenomenon may
be found in the adornment of the Porziuncola, named in reference to the
small plot where Saint Francis of Assisi gathered his first disciples, located
on the northern façade of the Franciscan monastery founded at San
Miguel Huejotzingo, Puebla, built in the middle of the sixteenth century,
and based on the Hebraic or Jerusalemite order of columns that was em-
ployed in the construction of the legendary Temple of Solomon.10 Huejotz-
ingo’s bizarre columns were probably copied from a still unknown European
engraving or were invented by the same friar-architect who either devel-
oped his own interpretation or carried out an exegesis of the various bibli-
cal descriptions of this mythical temple in order to design his astonishing
architectural adaptation (figure 4).11 In this sense, it may be demonstrated
that the structural and ideological basis of most of New Spain’s monastic
architecture is to be discovered in an interpretation of certain literary de-
scriptions of fantastic buildings that, following the model of incredible fauna
(Amazons, mermaids, Patagonian giants, etc.), also “found” in the Americas,
were realized in the form of monasteries whose façades, bas-relief sculp-
ture, and other ornamental elements were generally the result of the cleri-
cal imagination and not the work of professional architects or masons who
followed the established architectural models of their day.12
Although the Franciscans were guided by the millennial prophecies of
such medieval theologians as the Cistercian abbot Joaquín de Fiore (ca.
1135–1202), the arch-prophet of the Apocalypse, it should be emphasized
that in terms of iconographic reproduction, there is not only a close link
between a literary description and its subsequent architectural recreation
but also between a par ticular theological vision and its plastic representa-
tion. Nevertheless, one must bear in mind that the workers, from brick-
layers and carpenters to sculptors and painters, who constructed and
decorated the monastery at Huejotzingo and other important (and con-
comitant) monastic centers, were chiefly Indians.13 The imposing open
chapel of the Augustinian monastery erected at San Nicolás Actopan is
even more surprising in this sense for its walls are adorned with scenes of
inferno that echo the plot of the first dramatic work known in New Spain,
El juicio final (The Last Judgment), a play that has been attributed to the
Franciscan Andrés de Olmos and composed between 1531 and 1533; a
manuscript copy of the original text has been preserved in a subsequent
transcription, now housed in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
It is also important to consider that the thousands of meters of mural
painting found in these monasteries are not exclusively based on European
models. On the contrary, they are an unambiguous example of the inte-
gration of pre-Hispanic images, material, and technique, with other elements
inspired by the dominant European ideology and artistic convention. In
the case of the mural paintings of the Augustinian monastery at San
Miguel Arcángel, located in Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo, these elements are
found in the contemporary, yet allegorical, description of an imperative
12 · Introduction
Figure 3a. Monastery of San Agustín de Acolman, state of Mexico.

Vault of the cloister’s ante-refectory, adorned with a mural painting
that reproduces the sacred monogram of Christ (IHS), compared to
figure 3b (see page 13).
political reality: the Chichimec War, an armed conflict sparked by the

Spanish incursion into this region, located to the north of the valley of
Mexico, where it was believed that vast deposits of silver were to be found.
One of the most detailed descriptions of this conflict is found in Gonzalo
de las Casas’s little-known chronicle, Guerra de los chichimecas (Chichimec
War) (ca. 1571), in which his generally unenthusiastic appraisal of the uses
Figure 3b. Frontispiece of Alonso de Molina’s Confesionario

breve, en lengua mexicana y castellana (Brief Confessional, in
the Mexican and Castilian Languages), published in New Spain
in 1569. (Photo of the mural painting by Michael Schuessler;
frontispiece taken from Manuel Toussaint’s Arte colonial en
México [Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria, 1962].)
and customs of these nomads, who were collectively and scornfully referred
to as Chichimecs (in Nahuatl, dog lineage), allowed him to justify and
promote the bellum iustum (just war) waged against them, thus facilitat-
ing their Aristotelian subjection. Consequently, his chronicle provides a
wealth of details that are useful in the interpretation of the political-religious
14 · Introduction
Figure 4. Monastery of San Miguel Huejotzingo, Puebla. The Porziuncola

of this Franciscan monastery is probably the result of a careful reading of the
Book of Chronicles XVI–XVII, in which a section of the temple that Solomon
built to honor Yahweh is described in detail. In Santiago Sebastián, Icono-
grafía e iconología del arte novohispano (Mexico City: Grupo Azabache, 1992).
message of the mural program at Itzmiquilpan, whose interpretation has

been subject to animated debate since its discovery, underneath a thick
layer of white plaster, in the mid-1960s.
Although some scholars have attempted to attribute the motive for the
creation of this mural to a “chapter meeting” held at the monastery of
Itzmiquilpan that was conceived to celebrate the victories of the Spaniards
and their Otomí allies over the Chichimecs, who carried out frequent
and violent raids against these incipient monastic communities, the pri-
mary sources that have been employed to demonstrate this connection are
not contemporary to the period in which they were produced, despite the
fact that their content, based on oral tradition, heralds a previous era.14
Nevertheless, the images reproduced in the nave of this Augustinian
monastery are reminiscent of certain aspects regarding the descriptions of
a civic representation held in New Spain’s capital and documented by
both Bartolomé de las Casas and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who commented
on it in great detail. According to Fernando Horcasitas, this work, entitled
La batalla de los salvajes (The Battle of the Savages) and dating from 1539,
represents an attack by Indian archers (mecos) and Otomí warriors (oto-
mitlh), while its staging includes several elements related to its concomi-
tant artistic interpretation in the form of an astonishing mural program
executed on the northern frontier, far from New Spain’s political center.
Over the course of bibliographical as well as archival and field research,
I have been able to verify that both the subject matter of some of the mural
programs executed in monasteries and the open chapels constructed by
the three principal missionary orders in New Spain were inspired by a rein-
terpretation of engraved images, in the form of wood engravings and other
printed matter, and by a literary discourse, gleaned from books and other
didactic materials that European friars imported to New Spain in the early
years of Spanish colonization. During this preliminary phase, these books
were used to facilitate the rapid and effective indoctrination of the recently
conquered Indian population and, in their pictorial reproduction, include
features peculiar to the local interpretation of the recently imposed faith.
Although the friars initially made good use of the images included in
a wide range of religious publications (breviaries, confessionals, Bibles,
doctrines, sermons, etc.) to help indoctrinate the local population, soon
afterward this religious education was also carried out through dramatic
performances, conceived with this didactic purpose in mind and staged
within the ample grounds of the incipient monasteries. These enormous
spaces immediately recall the medieval squares utilized by itinerant preach-
ers such as San Vicente Ferrer (1350–1419), a celebrated missionary who
managed to convert multitudes of Jews, Arabs, and even heretics to the
Catholic faith during the latter fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.15
The situation encountered by the friars who had recently arrived in New
Spain was similar to that which the Dominican saint had faced almost two
centuries earlier: during the first decades of the spiritual conquest of
Mexico’s native population, there were so many souls to be saved that
they did not fit into the nave of any provincial church, since even the most
extensive of these had space for, at most, only a few thousand neophytes.
16 · Introduction
Nevertheless, Actopan’s atrium, which measures approximately 289 by 182

square meters, could hold up to fifty thousand people at a time.16 Many of
these neophytes attended Mass only during certain holy days, arriving from
small towns whose operations depended on large religious centers, such as
those Franciscan establishments in Tlaxcala and nearby Huejotzingo.17
Regarding the original inspiration for these enormous outdoor spaces,
until recently there existed only circumstantial evidence that the court-
yards of pre-Hispanic teocallis were the true ancestors of New Spain’s
atriums. For example, in his research, John McAndrew points out that
the “similarities are too close to be anything but a coincidence” (The Open-
Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico 237). Nevertheless, in his 2004
monograph entitled City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and
Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain, Jaime Lara presents a more prudent
and better- documented hypothesis: According to Lara, “It’s probably true
that the friars initially used the courtyard for outdoors devotion out of ne-
cessity and that it was inspired by pre-Hispanic practices; in Tlatelolco, for
example, the first church, a three-nave basilica (1527), was built within the
ancient ceremonial courtyard, an acknowledged sacred space” (19). What-
ever its true historical lineage, New Spain’s atrium possessed other inno-
vative architectural elements, such as processional and open chapels,
which, treated as a whole, constituted a suitable sacred enclosure to foster
a growing number of neophytes who arrived from their hamlets on certain
days of the liturgical calendar.18
I would like to return to the early religious plays—such as the work by
Andrés de Olmos, mentioned previously—which were staged in the large
atriums of New Spain’s monasteries. These works are distinguished by
their adaptation of European prototypes already considered obsolete in
the Iberian Peninsula, such as the medieval exemplum. Both European and
Indian chroniclers of the period described their reutilization as the result
of their presumed similarity with indigenous religious celebrations, which,
for the most part, took place outdoors. In the first of his Letters from Mex-
ico, Hernán Cortés mentions a “theatre-like” building located within the
ceremonial center of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. His observation casts some
light on issues related to the true nature of pre-Hispanic theater, a thorny
subject, since perhaps “theater” is not the most adequate term to describe
a phenomenon that at times appears more akin to a form of “spiritual
representation.”19 At this point, it is important to emphasize that in several
monasteries the subject matter of these representations was reproduced on
walls decorated with programs of mural painting that dealt with precisely
the same themes: the Apocalypse, the Last Judgment, and other evangelis-
tic subjects taken from the New Testament.
According to Othón Arróniz, mural painting is defined, like missionary

theater, by “its intention to display Christian dogmas, rather than by a de-
liberate formalist structure” (Teatro de evangelización en Nueva España 7)
and, as in the case of missionary theater, “this surprising approach to veri-
similitude must have been one of the most overwhelming elements for the
indigenous psyche, used to observing religious matters on an abstract,
mythical plane” (21). Their astonishment is clearly revealed in the annals
of the Indian chronicler of Chalco, Estado de México, baptized Domingo
Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin, prince
of the Nahua chroniclers, who assigned the theatrical representation of the
world’s destruction (in Nahuatl, tlamauizolli—miraculous/nexcuitilli—
example) to the year two-calli, that is, 1533.
As I have pointed out, this sort of theatrical performance required the
prior development of architectural spaces in which plays could be staged,
and, therefore, resulted in the design and construction of entirely unique
structures, such as the previously mentioned open and processional cha-
pels, whose erection was normally completed before that of the monastery
and its adjoining church, which, given their enormous proportions, took
several years to build. However, these more modest edifices could be used
relatively quickly, while the rest of the buildings of the monastic complex
were still under construction. Likewise, the often ambitious programs of
mural painting that decorated the interior walls of these monasteries in
many cases reflect the subject matter of missionary plays written by Euro-
peans but translated and interpreted by recently converted Indians into a
syncretic plastic expression. This phenomenon is discernible in the afore-
mentioned open chapel at Actopan, where an ambitious mural program
whose theme is the Last Judgment has been preserved on its interior walls.
This is the same subject matter of at least one known play that was com-
mented on by chroniclers of the period, such as the Franciscan Toribio de
Benavente (Motolonia) and Bartolomé de las Casas (figure 5).
Upon comparing the European text, in this case, a missionary play cre-
ated and adapted by European friars for an indigenous audience, with
the images of the same subject created by Indian artists, some important
variations become apparent regarding their respective interpretations. As a
result of this apparent discrepancy, one may glimpse certain characteristics
of a new, syncretic faith, one that reveals itself through a hybrid, or mes-
tizo, iconographic representation. Identical subject matters also appeared
in the form of dramatic representations, in so-called missionary theater,
translated and adapted to Nahuatl and other local languages by native
scribes, often incorporating Indian actors.20 It should be pointed out, how-
ever, that these representations were often modified to avoid references to
18 · Introduction
Figure 5. In the monastery of San Nicolás Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. General

view of its impressive open chapel where the mural paintings analyzed in this book
are located. (Photo by Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
the more “abominable” sins that, according to the moral conception of both
conquistadors and missionaries, the ancient Mexicans still incurred, such
as cannibalism, polygamy, and bigamy.
It may be argued that from the moment in which the European subject
initiated the invention of what would become an individual forged by the
union of two worlds, such a phenomenon would warrant the application of
some of the theories of “subalternity” and “resistance” now in vogue. How-
ever, the notion of the indigenous “other” developed by theorists such as
Tzvetan Todorov does not always take into account the voice of the Indian
subject; it generally limits its purview to the chronicles, histories, and letters
produced exclusively by Spaniards, favoring them above the often-silenced
voices of native subjects.21 Fortunately, the meticulous research of the
nahuatlato (expert in Nahuatl language and culture) James Lockhart, in
particular, his notion of “double mistaken identity,” has contributed greatly
to an understanding of this cultural phenomenon. In his work he analyzes
and questions the concept of the so-called indigenous other among the
various altepetl (autonomous cultural and political groups) inhabiting the
valley of Mexico at the time of conquest through the careful study of the
documents that they themselves produced. For example, in their own
documents, the Mexicas referred to the Spanish invaders as caxtillan or
caxtiltecas, thus coining their own term for the newly arrived strangers and
thereby establishing a difference between groups within their own per-
ceptions and worldview. According to these local accounts, the Mexicas
believed that the Spaniards were simply members of another autonomous
community, or altepetl, located within the borders of their known world. It
is significant to point out that the adjective caxtilteca can be translated as
“the place of chickens,” since in Nahuatl caxtil is the name of an edible
fowl, similar to the Asian chicken.22 In this case, the term is used because
of the word’s phonetic similarity to the place-name “Castilla” and its ad-
jectival form castellano (Castilian). Therefore, for the Nahuas, the Span-
iards were simply the inhabitants of Caxtilan, the “place of the chickens,”
a toponym that questions the much-celebrated myth in which the Nahuas
bestow a divine origin upon the Spanish conquistadors.23
While it is generally accepted that members of various indigenous com-
munities (altepetl) were responsible for the construction and ornamenta-
tion of the monasteries built in the valley of Mexico and its surrounding
areas from the second half of the sixteenth century onward, their partici-
pation was supervised by friar architects whose names are, for the most
part, unknown.24 Moreover, as Constantino Reyes Valerio has demon-
strated in statistical terms, some of these early Indian workers surely were
already trained masters (tlacuilos) in painting and writing (in Nahuatl, in
tlilli tlapalli—the black and the red).25 Consequently, at least some of the
artists of the initial phase of artistic representation were heirs to a profound
knowledge of their ancient culture and the representative traditions that
had been employed in its representation. Additionally, these tlacuilos were
masters of a carefully defined methodology of artistic depiction, the result
of their education in exclusive schools known as calmecac, where students
chosen from the upper strata of Mexica society (topiltzin) were trained in the
arts of painting and writing, a system the friars would continue shortly after
their arrival in New Spain. Of course, the participation of this first genera-
tion of Christianized tlacuilos, who had begun their religious and artistic
education at the twilight of the pre-Hispanic era, was limited to the initial
phases of European colonization, therefore, their contribution was conse-
quently limited to those mural cycles created during the first decades after
the conquest, many of which have certainly disappeared.26 Despite the
short duration of the period in which artists educated in the pre-Hispanic
tradition made a direct and original contribution to the development of
20 · Introduction
postconquest iconography, artistic programs that already evidenced syn-

cretic aspects were also being promoted by friars such as Pedro de Gante
and Bernardino de Sahagún, who actively developed and disseminated this
practice in the monastic schools of San José de los Naturales and the Impe-
rial College of Indians at Santiago de Tlatelolco, respectively. As a result,
their alumnae were avidly procured by the superiors of provincial monas-
teries in order to build and embellish their new religious constructions
and to transcribe, translate, and adapt plays into the local language.27
The extraordinary capacity of Indian painters and sculptors to tran-
scribe religious images was documented by such celebrated chroniclers as
Bartolomé de las Casas and Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In The True History
of the Conquest of New Spain, Díaz affirms that, around the middle of
the sixteenth century, Mexico could boast of three Indian artists who could
compete with Michelangelo himself or, at the very least, with Spanish
painter Alonso Berruguete. In chapter 209 of his remarkable chronicle
(completed around 1568 but not published until 1632), almost at the con-
clusion of what Carlos Fuentes has called his “vacillating epic,” Bernal re-
calls the astonishing artistic capacity of the Mexican natives, because anyone
who saw their works “could not believe that they were made by Indians”
(Díaz del Castillo 716).28
Consequently, it is not surprising to discover that, immediately after the
conquest, the artistic and ideological constructs belonging to the Indian
subject were employed by friars of emerging religious communities to build
and decorate the sacred spaces devoted to the celebration of a new faith.
As has been seen, these spaces included monasteries and chapels built to
accommodate and provide a place in which to celebrate Catholic rites for
the local population, as well as to house those who succumbed to measles,
smallpox, and influenza, diseases that, by the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury, had decimated over half of the Indian population in the valley of
Mexico and its environs.
For practical reasons, the first missionaries who arrived in New Spain
quickly adopted the way in which pre-Hispanic religious, historical, myth-
ological, and practical knowledge had previously been communicated to
and inculcated in the local population. This phenomenon is clearly illus-
trated in a treatise written during the latter part of the sixteenth century by
Diego Valadés, possibly the first mestizo Franciscan friar, disciple of Pedro
de Gante, whose work, accompanied by engravings and entitled Rhetorica
Christiana (Perugia, 1579), serves as a model—both literary and artistic—
for the cultural syncretism that was then occurring in the religious educa-
tion of Mexico’s Indian population.29 Valadés’s work itself reflects this
innovation through its appropriation and consequent modification of an

ostensibly European model (the illustrated book) to deal with the unique
social and political reality faced by New Spain’s budding religious com-
munities. As they had in the not- so- distant past, the members of the vast
indigenous congregation would again receive their cultural history and
religious mores through painted books, or codices, on the one hand, and,
on the other, in the form of dramatic representations that illustrated the
attributes and histories of their ancient gods.30 However, the iconographic
sources of these exceptional, and at times subtle, “pagan” variations
on Christian themes derived from European texts and images have only
recently been studied, while some key issues regarding the pre-Hispanic
concept of the plastic arts have also been taken into consideration in recent
years, for example, the polyvalence of color, spatial arrangement, and
perspective (or lack of it), among other elements to be found in the mu-
ral paintings and plays of this period. Consequently, it is astounding that
the intimate relationship between the dramatic and plastic arts has not
yet been taken into consideration, since it is precisely at this interstice that
the origins of Indo- Christian art and literature are to be discovered.
The surviving pre-Hispanic elements of colonial Mexico’s mural pro-
grams have conventionally been considered merely isolated features or
leitmotifs, such as those found within the decorative borders in the mural
paintings of the period (e.g., the mural cycle located at the Franciscan
monastery at Zinacantepec, ca. 1569, Estado de México). The pictographic
spaces of this mural remind the viewer of the marginalia—with their
accompanying grotto-like figures—employed in the frontispieces of illus-
trated books of that period (figures 6a, b). However, the innovative use
of this iconographic language in the context of colonial Mexico, and its
consequent importance (as a means for an artistic expression sui generis,
neither literary nor artistic but a foundational example of what I have dubbed
Indo-Christian syncretic iconography), has not been adequately considered.
This is my primary object of study in this book.
In order to establish the relationship of theatrical performances and ar-
tistic representations with the evangelization of the Indian communities
of the valley of Mexico and beyond, I introduce the first Indo- Christian
dramatis persona, a bigamous Indian named Lucía, whose name was
probably chosen owing to its affinity for Lucifer. She was immortalized in
the missionary play El juicio final (The Last Judgment), written by Andrés
de Olmos, and her likeness appears painted on one of the murals located
in Actopan’s enormous open chapel. Some scholars have identified this
female portrait as the “woman of the serpent,” because, like Lucía, she
22 · Introduction
Figure 6a. Example of the marginalia with their respective

grottesco figures, models for “Roman style” painting, from the
book Dialectica resolutio cum textu Aristotelis, published in
Mexico City in 1554.
wears a necklace in the shape of a snake, or coatl, a feature that relates her
to the pre-Hispanic goddess Cihuacoatl (figure 7). According to my inter-
pretation, her appearance in Olmos’s work (1531–1533) may have been re-
peated at least forty years later, in three panels in Actopan’s open chapel,
as an iconographic (and a theatrical) result of the friars’ efforts to trans-
Figure 6b. A detail of the mural painting program at the monastery of San
Miguel Zinacantepec, state of Mexico, whose architectural border was in-
spired by the frontispiece of this book published in New Spain (figure 6a).
Likewise noteworthy is the vertical petatillo (straw mat) motif that frames
this scene and also provides the image with a native component. The same
frontispiece was used in other books and materials printed in Mexico, for
example, in the Diálogo de doctrina cristiana, en la lengua de Mechuacán
(Christian Doctrine Dialogue in the Language of Michoacán) by the Fran-
ciscan friar Maturino Gilberti, published in Mexico City in 1559.
form the Indians’ spiritual values into a new order within the canons of the
Christian faith. In this sense, the ancient Mexicans, who viewed this god-
dess as their cosmic mother and precursor of their culture and civilization,
now bore witness as she was transformed into a sinner and tormented for
all eternity in an enormous vat filled with boiling water or oil.
The aforementioned cycle of mural paintings in the Augustinian mon-
astery at Itzmiquilpan lacks an exclusively European inspiration, as the
paintings clearly and repeatedly demonstrate images, material, and tech-
niques derived from the pre-Hispanic artistic tradition (particularly from
24 · Introduction
Figure 7. The Nahua goddess Cihuacoatl, a

deity who has been compared to the female fig-
ure Lucía who is represented in a section of the
mural painting inside Actopan’s open chapel
(figure 29). (Image of Cihuacoatl taken from
the Internet.)
the codex), along with other elements directly inspired by the prevailing
European perspective. Together these create, in its unprecedented en-
tirety, an artistic program that Olivier Debroise has described as “a sophis-
ticated Renaissance anamorphosis” (“Imaginario fronterizo/identidades
en tránsito” 172). Within the detailed representation of pre-Hispanic ob-
jects found in the mural, the meticulous recreation of the battle gear used
by one of the two Indian groups stands out while being represented against
a typically Renaissance phytomorphic background, some of whose details
recall the marginalia of Malermi’s Biblia Italica (figure 23, p. 112).31
Among the many examples to be found of pre-Hispanic military gear
reproduced in the mural painting program at Itzmiquilpan are the chimalli
(shield), pantli (banner), and macahuitl (club), as well as the reproduction

of Itzmiquilpan’s toponymic glyph, of indisputable pre-Hispanic origin
(figure 8). Furthermore, in a recent publication, David Charles Wright
Carr, perhaps inspired by the previous research of Olivier Debroise, pro-
poses that, although the upper frieze is rather orthodox and might repre-
sent a symbolic battle between Good and Evil,
when the painters of the lower frieze took these models up again and
inserted them into the battle, the grotto-like monsters were transformed
into participants of the sacred war, conceived in the terms of central
Mexico’s ancient religion. This is evident in the presence of Indian
military signs: eagles on top of prickly pears; eagles facing jaguars;
speech scrolls presenting, in short, the water-fire sign, a metaphor of war.
(“Zidada Hyadi: El venerado padre sol en la parroquia de Ixmiquilpan,
Hidalgo” 44)
This hypothesis turns out to be most convincing when it is recalled that

if one event were to epitomize the daily life of Augustinian friars and their
Indian neophytes who inhabited the region, it would most certainly be the
anxiety provoked by the frequent invasions of marauding bands of Chi-
chimec warriors, which led to the destruction of many settlements poised
on the outer limits of the Spanish colonial enterprise. During this period
Figure 8. Monastery of San Miguel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. General view

of the mural painting located in the sotocoro, one part of several illustrated
segments that adorn the nave of this Augustinian monastery and church.
26 · Introduction
and over the course of several decades, a war was being fought between the
Spanish settlers, eager to exploit and protect their recently discovered
mines with the help of their Otomí allies, against the belligerent Chi-
chimecs: the fearsome natives of what are now the north-central states of
Querétaro and Guanajuato who were expert warriors, consummate bow-
men, and, later on, feared horsemen.
Due to this unique situation, the images represented on the nave of this
church constitute an artistic depiction that is most appropriate for the
comprehensive study of the development of artistic and religious syncre-
tism on the periphery of New Spain’s growing frontiers. At the same time,
when subjected to a careful iconological analysis, this mural cycle allows
for the extrapolation of a set of elements with a rich symbolic value that
supersedes the ultimately limited observations of a purely historical or aes-
thetic approach, since its results help uncover the very underpinnings of
Indo- Christian art and iconography as a whole. This methodology is also
useful to reconstruct, to the extent possible, the emergence of a new cul-
ture, born from the juxtaposition of both European and Indian artistic
and ideological criteria.
In the case of early artistic production in New Spain, such methodol-
ogy should be deployed with care, since here one is not confronting the
exposition and analysis of representative trends of an artistic tradition
established within a single cultural entity—such as the Italian frescoes of
Giotto and Masaccio—for in the case of this incipient art, the scholar must
confront two entities that had developed autonomously over many centu-
ries. Both traditions are heirs to a cultural tradition that underlies their
respective artistic expressions and that have consequently laid the founda-
tion for the development of a new artistic mode of representation that serves
to illustrate the immediate products of the meeting of two different ideo-
logical and artistic traditions. By employing the interpretative tool pro-
vided by an iconological approach, one may determine how and in what
way the iconographic expressions of two very dissimilar cultures led to a
hybrid art, at once univocal and harmonious, one that I have baptized as
syncretic (in this case, Indo- Christian) iconography.
An analysis that includes the results of investigations from several disci-
plines also helps answer some pertinent questions regarding the history
and development of the literary and plastic arts of New Spain. Such ques-
tions include both the aesthetic as well as the ideological contributions of
Indian groups to this vast artistic program, as well as the introduction of
certain hybrid imagery within the context of religious architecture and its
ensuing ornamentation. These images are to be found within a pre-Hispanic
artistic framework that supports themes common to European ecclesiastic

painting and/or other related arts, such as missionary theater. It is within
this context where the traces of an Indian hand are to be found. It must be
emphasized that these influences are not limited to the survival of a few
decorative fragments of a shattered culture, stripped of all original icono-
graphic value; instead, they constitute the symbolic lexicon that, based on
European formal structures, begets a new aesthetic and ideological con-
sciousness. In this sense, the art of this hybrid nature represents yet another
way to document and interpret a key aspect of New Spain’s early icono-
graphical development.
At this point, one may perceive a phenomenon comparable with a
syntagmatic (i.e., linguistic) construction in which the authoritative Eu-
ropean influence allows for the arrangement of a series of entirely new
modes of representation that are the direct products of the pre-Hispanic
world and that are held together within a European framework. This con-
struction is precisely what makes their existence and development possible
within the political and ideological context of colonial Mexico, defined, to
a great extent, by the Spanish reconquest, which resonated deeply within
the Iberian psyche. It also demonstrates its structural similarity with a pa-
limpsest; in this case, the pre-Hispanic images are superimposed on the
paradigmatic—and controlling—European structure. Their consequent
use as a didactic-religious tool by European friars lends a substantial tex-
tual and perhaps even mythopoetic value to the works created within this
particular cultural and religious milieu. This recasting of the two tradi-
tions gave birth to a new theological interpretation in the form of mural
programs that soon appeared on the walls of many of the monasteries built
in the valley of Mexico during the middle of the sixteenth century, and
one that was not forgotten in the development of their respective missionary
plays, whose subject matter was, on many occasions, identical. In the case
of mid- sixteenth- century religious painting, syncretism was not limited
to a casual decorative phenomenon, as may be perceived from the early
stages of the iconographic program. Through color, representative tech-
niques, and the symbolic value assigned to the images, many elements of
the pre-Hispanic artistic world echo within a structurally European text.
Such a synthetic phenomenon reveals important issues regarding Mexican
plastic arts—particularly mural painting—and their consequent adoption
by the friars who arrived in New Spain beginning in 1524.
It may be asserted that the configurations of many of the mural paint-
ings and the buildings in which they are housed are based on designs to be
found in ancient books brought to the New World by European friars,
28 · Introduction
beginning with those likely imported by the three Flemish Franciscans

who anticipated the arrival of the Twelve Apostolic Franciscans by one
year (1523). An example of this phenomenon is to be found in several Eu-
ropean illustrated books, and afterward in engravings created in New
Spain, which almost perfectly match the iconographic figures incorpo-
rated into the mural cycles in many of New Spain’s monasteries. Neverthe-
less, these religious images were not the only source of inspiration for the
friars and, by association, the tlacuilos, whom they employed in the deco-
ration of newly constructed religious spaces. Architectural treatises as well
as the ubiquitous engravings printed mostly in the Netherlands and Ger-
many, but also in France and Italy, arrived in the New World and, conse-
quently, strongly influenced Mexico’s iconographic development.
Moreover, in the case of Itzmiquilpan and Actopan, one may clearly
perceive that the orthodox model provided by the grottesco-like design
employs Indian iconography in order to instruct the members of their
communities regarding certain beliefs espoused by the new religion, whose
tenets were enforced through a graphic and semantic reinterpretation of
their traditional icons. It should be noted that these pre-Hispanic icons
are to be found within the textual surface of the missionary plays or mural
paintings, although they are understandably adjusted to the paradigms that
govern Christian discourse.32 Owing to didactic and political motives, icon-
ographic elements from the Indian tradition are not the most common
source for such mural paintings, but they do provide an important resource
for the systematic study of the development of what has been given the
name syncretic art, or tequitqui.33 This was the artistic product of the inter-
pretation that tlacuilos made of sacred and secular texts, along with their
corresponding illustrations, reinterpreted under the guidance of the religious
brethren who had arrived in New Spain to evangelize the local population
and to offer their services in educational centers such as the School of Me-
chanical Arts at San José de los Naturales, the Imperial College for Indians
at Santiago de Tlatelolco, and the remote Augustinian School of Manual
Training at Tiripitío, Michoacán.
During my research, I have outlined the way in which some of these
iconographic programs match the apocalyptic subject matter of the first
plays produced in New Spain, such as El juicio final. At the same time, I
have pointed out that we may discover the way in which Indian artists re-
interpreted these texts and images, many times in a subtle way to avoid the
suspicions of the supervising friars, through iconography that they essen-
tially invented for themselves. Significantly, these representations did not
exclude indirect references to native beliefs that the missionaries were
desperately attempting to exorcise. In closing, I would also like to propose

that, in the case of sixteenth-century religious painting, syncretism is not
simply limited to an accidental ornamental phenomenon, but that it may
also be observed from the early stages of an iconographic program that fre-
quently was based on European illustrated books and, on rare but signifi-
cant occasions, on indigenous codices created after the conquest, many of
which have been lost. Such a “palimpsestic synthesis” generates important
questions regarding the plastic arts, particularly mural painting, their de-
velopment of these in New Spain, and their consequent exploitation by the
first major group of friars who arrived in Mexico beginning in May 1524.
Chapter One
Toward a Literature of
Foundations
Indo- Christian Literature: Renascent Genres
During its early stages, the literature of New Spain included works of a
marked historiographical nature, whose formal and thematic characteris-
tics are defined by the fact that they are extra-literary, and that their
purpose—within a historical context—was far from emulating a traditional
work of literary fiction that might entertain Cervantes’s “curious reader.”1
However, as Alfonso Reyes has pointed out, although
the aim of the primitive chronicle is not the same as that of the belles-
lettres, it may be said that it serves to inaugurate the genre and, up to a
certain point, accompanies it. It was undertaken by the conquistadores
eager to perpetuate their fame; by missionaries who, having made con-
tact with the Indian soul and shunning notoriety, seldom even hastened
to publish their works. (Letras de la Nueva España 38)
This affirmation is clearly and repeatedly demonstrated in such funda-

mental works as Hernán Cortés’s five Cartas de relación (Letters from
Mexico), Fray Toribio de Benavente’s (Motolinia’s) Historia de los indios
de la Nueva España (History of the Indians of New Spain), and Bernardino
de Sahagún’s encyclopedic Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Es-
paña (General History of the Things of New Spain). Certainly this peculiar
quality does not exclude the presence of narrative elements in one or all of
these texts which, through the use of twenty-first century theoretical crite-
30
Toward a Literature of Foundations · 31
ria, could be considered literary. In this sense, Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s
True History of the Conquest of New Spain serves as an atypical example
owing to the fact that its detailed narration of the events related to the
conquest of Mexico is permeated with various features of the modern
novel avant-la-lettre.2
Nonetheless, these works may be considered representative of “New
Spanish”3 literature only in the sense that they document the European
subject’s first impressions and interpretations of the multiple aspects of the
still unknown quarta orbis pars, that is, the Americas. With the region’s
extensive geography, its nearly infinite variety of flora and fauna, its exotic
inhabitants, and, what proved to be even more seductive to the forgers of
Western literary imagination, the presence of implausible—and certainly
incomprehensible—religious and cultural traditions in enormous ceremo-
nial centers, as well as the exotic beliefs that inspired them, after five centu-
ries, and in light of recent investigations and new theoretical criteria that
may be applied to the very question of “literary-ness,” these texts constitute
a point of departure for the conception of a Spanish-American literary
tradition, a process that continues to this day.4
Nevertheless, within the historical, political, administrative, social, and
cultural context of New Spain, one may encounter a primitive—albeit
ephemeral—form of literary expression, which henceforth I will refer to
as “Indo- Christian.” I do this to differentiate it from the general literature
of “New Spain” (a term that, within this context, would include every liter-
ary expression produced in this par ticular geopolitical region). The ori-
ginal manifestations of this subgenre date back to a dramatic expression
whose genesis may be found in the Old World and whose American mani-
festation has been categorized as missionary, or evangelical, theater, and
whose purpose—on both sides of the Atlantic—was quite similar indeed.
The appearance of these embryonic dramatic works occurred concurrently
with what Constantino Reyes-Valerio, while considering colonial Mexican
architecture, baptized “Indo- Christian art,” that is, a hybrid, mestizo, or
syncretic expression, one that represented an original aspect of New
Spain’s nascent culture, very similar in function to that produced by so-
called missionary theater, staged to indoctrinate New-World parishioners
in the tenets of Catholicism.5
Nevertheless, it is important to consider where this syncretic literature
begins—perhaps in pre- Columbian literary expressions, most of which
have been lost, save the few exceptions that have been mentioned far
more than they have been studied, or in historiographical documents, such
as letters, accounts, and the aforementioned chronicles and histories,6 or
32 · Chapter 1
perhaps what would appear to be a more plausible origin—in the symbolic

and discursive products of the clash between Europeans and Indians
within the context of the spiritual conquest of Mexico. If one accepts
such a premise, the first two expressions of this contentious yet fertile
cultural collision, were, respectively and mutually, missionary theater
and mural painting, both direct and exclusive products of the conquest
of New Spain, whose aesthetic and ideological product does not con-
form to the principles of either cultural entity but, rather, is forged from
both traditions, through an intercultural exchange best described as pa-
limpsestic in nature, in which there exists a marked dominance of the
European cosmovision and its consequent representation over that of
the Indian.7
Both the aesthetic and ideological ramifications of this cultural conflu-
ence have been designated “syncretic,” this, according to Octavio Paz, ow-
ing to the lack of a better term to explain the multiple connotations inherent
in this phenomenon. In his prologue to La utopía mexicana del siglo XVI:
Lo bello, lo verdadero y lo bueno (The Mexican Utopia of the Sixteenth Cen-
tury: Beauty, Truth, and Goodness), a collective work written by Guillermo
Tovar de Teresa, Miguel León-Portilla, and Silvio Zavala, Paz bemoans the
lack of a methodical contemplation regarding this phenomenon, because,
as he points out,
the word “syncretism,” generally employed to designate this phenome-

non, does not describe it entirely: the process and the result was more
subtle and profound than the mere and whimsical combination of dif-
ferent beliefs. [ . . . ] If we want to understand our past and ourselves,
one day someone will need to reflect upon this matter, which has been
mentioned so many times, although it has never been analyzed in its
enormous complexity. (14)
As historian James Lockhart has emphasized, New Spain’s cultural rich-

ness is not the result of the mutual understanding and immediate assimila-
tion of two different cultures nor the product of the hegemony of one
political group over another. According to Lockhart’s hypothesis, during
the early stages of the Spanish colonization of Mexico, the uniqueness of
Indo- Christian culture was the result of a sustained “double mistaken
identity” between two radically different ethnic groups. In the valley of
Mexico, this phenomenon occurred between the caxtiltecatl (as the Indi-
ans soon baptized the Spaniards) and the Nahuas, particularly the Mexica,
inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.8 Among other things, this situation
enabled religious beliefs, linguistic expressions, and cultural attitudes to

endure in a parallel manner, even centuries after the teocallis (temples),
momoztlis (ceremonial platforms), and calmecacs (colleges), among other
distinctive Mesoamerican cultural elements, had been destroyed or se-
verely modified.9
As will be discussed later, some of the most relevant and enduring cul-
tural products of this “clash between clay and copper,” as Alfonso Reyes
once described it, were created precisely within the context of missionary
theater and mural painting, which provided the initial backdrop for the
representation of these dramatic performances. It is worthwhile to point
out that during this first phase of the conquest, several Nahuatl neolo-
gisms appeared, such as quaatequia (to pour water over someone’s head),
which signified baptism, and tzonilpia (to tie someone’s hair), referring to
the First Communion.10 In fact, it may be affirmed that during the con-
struction and decoration of these early churches and monasteries, some
of the most important figures of Indo- Christian worship, such as Saint
Thomas- Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe-Tonantzin, are to be found in an
embryonic state. Nonetheless, although Indian neophytes were often aware
of the complex meaning behind such conceptions, it took some time for
most of the friars to become aware of this “blasphemy.”11 Echoes of this
ancient past, dismantled but not destroyed, resonate in Guillermo Bonfil
Batalla’s México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, may be discovered in
Anita Brenner’s Idols behind Altars: Modern Mexican Art and Its Cultural
Roots, and are revealed and analyzed in Jacques Lafaye’s Quetzalcóatl and
Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, to men-
tion but three emblematic works.
In his meticulous survey of early Mexican missionary theater, Autos y
coloquios del siglo XVI (Sixteenth- Century Passion Plays and Dialogues),
José Rojas Garcidueñas underlines the intimate relationship that this type
of theater shares with monastic architecture and its corresponding icono-
graphic programs, especially with regard to their staging, because, accord-
ing to the author, most of these performances were carried out
in the monasteries’ huge courtyards, which could hold enormous crowds.

[ . . . ] When performances were carried out in these areas, stages were
usually built, and the temple’s façade or the processional chapels were
used as decoration, and many times the open chapels were transformed
into an appropriate stage, thus perfecting their operation and the spe-
cial purpose for which they had been built: the apostolic mission of
evangelization.12 (xix)
34 · Chapter 1
Undoubtedly, most of the decoration included in the aforementioned

open and processional chapels was also provided by mural painting, along
with sculpture in high relief, which is one of the most representative fea-
tures of these sui generis architectural spaces, as were the images included
in the paintings upon their walls.13 In some cases, as will be discussed
later, a formal and thematic coincidence between mural painting and
certain missionary plays may be clearly perceived. This is hardly a surpris-
ing phenomenon, because both missionary theater and mural painting
share a common lineage: on the one hand, those illustrated books brought
to the New World by European friars and, on the other, the ancient tradi-
tion of the Nahua, Otomí, and Mayan codices of pre- and post- Columbian
Mexico. Some of the former survived the conquest at least partially intact,
while others were elaborated by scribes during the colonial period. In both
cases, their pictographic language, similar in function to the European
alphabet, served to document local ceremonies, rites, and mitotes—in
other words, to preserve a collective memory.14
Ethno-Dramatic Performances in Pre-Hispanic

Mexico: Rite, Theater, or Spiritual Performance?
Since the mid-nineteenth century, historians, philologists, and scholars of

New Spain’s literary culture have engaged in a constant and vigorous de-
bate as to whether there was ever such a thing as pre- Columbian theater
and, if there was, whether it deserves to be considered truly theatrical,
which would be equivalent to placing it within the Eurocentric parame-
ters of a clearly Western definition.15 Although this method would appear
to be an attempt to judge and organize pre-Hispanic dramatic expressions
and the epistemology they convey within a European model, other research-
ers insist that dramatic performance is a worldwide phenomenon shared by
every advanced civilization; for example, both the Greek and the Hindu
cultures created plays at some point in their cultural evolution; this theater
usually coincides with what might be considered their “Golden Age,” to
employ a purely Western phrase and concept.
In his Guía de representaciones teatrales en la Nueva España, Siglos
XVI al XVIII (Guide to Theater Per for mances in New Spain: XVI–XVIII
Centuries), Armando de Maria y Campos sets forth a universalist hypoth-
esis through a series of rhetorical questions that help emphasize the “dra-
matic” elements found in pre-Hispanic Nahua performances: “Was the
Greek phenomenon, in which dialogue was born from the hymns in
honor of the gods, repeated in America? May we consider the song known
as ‘Hymn to Nezahualcoyotl’ as a play, because it seems to have preserved
traces of the original dialogue and the first verse might be interpreted as
a theatrical stage direction?” (10). His questioning brings forth a sensible
reflection that casts important doubts on the views shared by nineteenth-
century and even some twentieth-century historians, who categorically
reject the possible existence of a pre-Hispanic dramatic tradition.
De Maria y Campos himself cites a representative example: the five
volumes of the Historia de la Iglesia en México (History of the Church in
Mexico) by Father Mariano Cuevas (1879–1949), in which the author re-
grets the lack of dramatic arts among the Indians, in general, and the
Nahuas, in particular, since, according to Cuevas, “The Indians’ mitotes
and areitos, with their teponaztli, which Bernal Díaz said ‘belonged to the
devil,’ remained rudimentary, extremely sad dances ending in actual death,
therefore incapable of entertaining anyone” (quoted by Maria y Campos, in
Cuevas, Historia de la Iglesia en México 10).
In spite of the apparent lack of dramatic representations in the pre-
Hispanic world, nineteenth-century philologist José María Vigil, in his
Reseña histórica de la literatura mexicana (Historical Review of Mexican
Literature), devotes an entire chapter to Espectáculos teatrales de los antig-
uos aztecas (Theater Performances of the Ancient Aztecs) and De cómo los
misioneros utilizaron esta costumbre para la propaganda religiosa (How the
Missionaries Used This Custom for Religious Propaganda) (101).16 After
considering a passage in which Father José Acosta describes an Indian per-
formance, Vigil considers the assessment of Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavi-
jero, author of the Historia Antigua de México (Ancient History of Mexico),
among many other works:
This description by Father Acosta reminds us of the Greeks’ first repre-

sentations and there is no doubt that if the Mexican empire had lasted
one more century, its theater would have been reduced to its best form, as
Greek theater was gradually reformed. (quoted in Vigil, Reseña histórica
de la literatura mexicana 102)
However, Vigil admits that many times the practical aims of these per-
formances prevailed over their entertainment value, and he eventually
recognizes these works’ inherent worth: “Undoubtedly, they can and
should be included in the wider body of our national literature: they repre-
sent valuable historical and linguistic documents for Mexico, and it is un-
der that double aspect that they are studied and commented upon by both
36 · Chapter 1
Mexican and foreign scholars of American literature” (Reseña histórica de

la literatura mexicana 106).
On the other hand, Jean Duvignaud, author of Sociología del teatro
(Sociology of Theater), points out the reasons, from a modern perspective,
that this type of “dramatic ceremony” cannot be considered theatrical,
this owing to the fact that the ancient representations had very different
intentions. According to Duvignaud:
The boundaries between theater and social life are to be found in the
sublimation of real conflicts; by definition, the dramatic ceremony is a
social ceremony which has been deferred, suspended, frozen. Dramatic
art knows that it finds itself in the margins of concrete reality. [ . . . ]
The forms of ceremony and staging are distinguished from one an-
other, according to different inflections, which are diminished in so-
cial practice and increased in aesthetic practice. (quoted in Partida,
Teatro mexicano: Historia y dramaturgia [Vol. 2]: Teatro de evangeli-
zación en náhuatl 15)
Consistent with this position, New Spanish missionary theater, which

frequently included genuine baptisms, marriages, and Holy Communions
within the ceremonial-performative apparatus, could not be considered
“theater” in a modern Western sense.17 Therefore, according to Alfonso
Reyes, one must appreciate this performative phenomenon as the inaugura-
tion of the dramatic genre in New Spain, in the same way that the chroni-
cles may be considered the beginning of the region’s belles-lettres, because it
“begets them and, to a certain extent, keeps them company” (Letras de la
Nueva España 38).
Consequently, the unqualified rejection concerning the theatrical
value of pre-Hispanic dramatic performances must be reconsidered and
reformulated through the establishment of a new (yet indispensable) liter-
ary subgenre, which could be called “proto- drama,” “incipient drama,” or,
in a postmodern sense, “religious per for mance.”18 From this standpoint, a
conclusion as unforgiving as the one reached by Armando Partida (at the
end of the twentieth century) is untenable. In his edition of Teatro mexi-
cano: Historia y dramaturgia (Vol. 2): Teatro de evangelización en náhuatl
(Mexican Theater: History and Dramaturgy [Vol 2]: Missionary Theater in
Nahuatl), Partida insists that “we cannot take the pre-Hispanic ritual sys-
tem into consideration from the point of view of European drama, either
in the 16th century or in the 20th century, despite the efforts of many
contemporary theorists to homogenize ritual and theater” (16).
Despite this unqualified rejection, expert nahuatlato Miguel León-

Portilla points out that before the arrival of the Spaniards, Nahua culture
had already developed performances that may be considered theatrical, in
a traditional, that is, “Western,” sense.19 In his monograph “Teatro náhuatl
prehispánico” (Pre-Hispanic Nahuatl Theater), he documents the existence
of an advanced theater among the Nahuas, upon taking into consideration
such eyewitness accounts as the observations of Hernán Cortés. In the
third of his Letters from Mexico, Cortés describes a “theater-like” construc-
tion, most likely a momoztli or platform, when he refers to the preparations
for a battle fought in the very heart of Mexico-Tenochtitlan:
[ . . . ] and [the blunderbuss] was taken to the market square, where it

was placed in something like a theater in the middle of it, which was
made of stone and mortar, shaped like a square, about two estados and a
half [approximately 15 feet] tall, and with thirty steps from one corner to
the other, which they used for celebrations and games; the performers
were to be found there, so that all the people in the market, and the
ones below and above the entrance, could observe what they did. (13,
emphases added)
Besides this clear description of a theater-like architectural construction,

one also finds references to pre-Hispanic theaters in the works of other
chroniclers, both laypersons and members of the clergy, both European
and Indian: Díaz del Castillo, Motolinia, Sahagún, Durán, Mendieta,
Torquemada, Father Acosta, Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Boturini, and Clavijero,
among others, all attest to the existence of a dramatic tradition in pre-
Columbian Mexico.20 Fragments that were likely from pre-Hispanic plays
(almost all of which have been lost) may be found in the Colección de
cantares mexicanos (Collection of Mexican Songs), the Historia de la lit-
eratura náhuatl (History of the Nahuatl Literature) by Ángel María
Garibay, and the Veinte himnos sacros (Twenty Sacred Hymns) compiled
by Sahagún, among other early sources (León-Portilla, “Teatro náhuatl pre-
hispánico” 15).
To further illustrate its historical and aesthetic development, León-
Portilla divides pre-Hispanic representations into four general stages. The
first one includes the oldest forms of dances, chants, and representations
in honor of the gods, because, according to the testimony of Sahagún’s in-
formants, “there was a kind of sacred cycle of perpetual theater in the pre-
Hispanic Nahuatl world, which took place without interruption throughout
18 months comprised of 20 days” (“Teatro náhuatl prehispánico” 17).21
38 · Chapter 1
The second stage in this process includes what he considers diverse variet-
ies of comedy and public entertainment, performed, among others, by the
Nahua equivalent of puppeteers and minstrels, while a third stage in-
cluded the staging of important Nahua myths and legends, because:
in addition to orators, groups of actors who dramatically performed leg-

ends and myths made their appearance. In the repertoire of texts col-
lected by Sahagún, as well as in the collections of Mexican songs and
other documents, one finds several hymns and poems which clearly
show the presence of several characters that engage in a dialogue, offer-
ing the culminating moments of ancient Nahua myths and legends.
(“Teatro náhuatl prehispánico” 18)
It is worthwhile to point out that the last phase of Nahua performances

includes all the features of Western theater, because they constitute what
“we would analogically call comedies and dramas, with an argument con-
nected to social and family issues” (“Teatro náhuatl prehispánico” 32).
The reason, according to León-Portilla, is that “they are fragments that
provide evidence of what seems to have been an attempt to free Nahuatl
theater from strictly religious themes, in order to introduce problems of
daily life” (ibid.). The author concludes his analysis of pre-Hispanic the-
ater by declaring that symbolism and poetry, so characteristic of Middle
American cultures, coalesced in dramatic action. Clearly, the develop-
mental process of European theater was quite similar, as both experienced
a similar evolutionary phase, and, as a result, both traditions were able to
come together in the manner that I will consider later.
With regard to the primary sources invoked by León-Portilla, it should
be pointed out that in his encyclopedic annotations regarding Nahua
culture, Fray Diego Durán, author of the Historia de las Indias de Nueva
España islas de la Tierra Firme (History of the Indies of New Spain and
Terra Firme), documents (albeit almost two generations after the conquest)
the feasts, areitos, and mitotes held in the ancient city of Cholula, an impor-
tant religious center of the Nahua world, because it was the sacred city of
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent and ancient culture deity.22 In his curi-
ous historiographical work, full of references and images that reflect a clear
Greco-Latin overlay, the friar describes a per formance dedicated to Quet-
zalcoatl, the precinct’s maximum deity. His observations and interpretations
serve to illustrate and enforce the notion that a well- developed dramatic
tradition existed in Cholula, one that, owing to its subject matter, recalls
the European religious dramas of the Middle Ages, while its scenographic
descriptions suggest the existence of a theater, as it is understood in the

Western world, even if we take into account the temporal and cultural
distance reflected in Durán’s work:
This temple had a medium-sized courtyard, and on its feast day, great
dances and celebrations along with very amusing entremeses took place,
for which there was, in the middle of this courtyard, a small, thirty-
square-foot theater, very whitewashed, which they covered with branches
and embellished for that day, with as much cleanness as possible, sur-
rounding it with arches made with every kind of roses and rich feather
work, hung here and there, and assorted birds and rabbits and other
things for the feast and which were pleasant to the eye. After they had
eaten, all the merchants and lords danced around that theater, with all
their opulence and fine garments. The dancing ceased and the actors
came out: the first act was an entremés about a man with pustules who
pretended to have many of them, complaining about the pain he was
feeling, mixed with many amusing words and sayings which made the
people laugh [ . . . ] and thus everyone who suffered from these diseases
and illnesses came forth with their offerings and prayers to this idol and
temple.23 (Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la
Tierra Firme, vol. 2, 75, emphases added)
Owing to its treatment of secular subjects, such as the ailments that the
Indians suffered—some, such as bubas, brought by the Spaniards—this
play could easily be included in the last dramatic phase mentioned by
León-Portilla.
In a section of his foundational study entitled The Spiritual Conquest of
Mexico, Robert Ricard, evidently inspired by Motolinia, considers a pro-
duction that was staged during the first years of New Spain’s colonization,
La caída de Adán y Eva (The Fall of Adam and Eve) (1539), which conserves
certain features apparently preserved from pre-Hispanic theater:
During Easter 1539, La caída de Adán y Eva was performed upon a

charmingly arranged stage, in which the first father and the first mother
of the human race appeared in Paradise, surrounded by plants and flow-
ers, “some of which were natural and others forged with feathers and
gold”; they were surrounded by all kind of animals, many of them
[were] well-made, [and were manipulated] by some boys. The four rivers
of Paradise were also included. [ . . . ] Apparently, it was a four-part reli-
gious play: the temptation, the fall, the divine curse, and the expulsion
40 · Chapter 1
from Paradise, and at the end the lesson about work and suffering. Mo-
tolinia specifies that this religious play was performed by Indians, in
their own language. (Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico 307)
Given this and other examples, Ricard concludes that, indeed, elements
of the performance tradition developed in pre-Hispanic Mexico may be
found in some of these early plays, because
they had features of the pagan era’s dramatic tradition which the mis-
sionaries did not disdain: thus, some boys were disguised as animals in
the per formance of La caída de Adán y Eva [The Fall of Adam and
Eve]. However, if the per formances were to be accessible to the Indian
minds, it was not enough to have them performed in their own lan-
guage and by Indian actors. The indications that were given are proof
that the religious plays had an extremely rudimentary structure: events
were represented as they might have happened in reality, without dra-
matic affectation. (Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico 312)
Returning to the previously mentioned play, once the elaborate and

smoking stage that Durán describes had been prepared, and once the ac-
tors had donned their costumes, the action began. Durán describes the pre-
sentation of an Indian boy disguised as the goddess Xochiquetzal: the actor
weaves while sitting on the steps of the main temple, as representatives of
the diverse guilds of pre-Hispanic society pass by, also in costume:24
While he pretended to weave, all the officers disguised as monkeys, cats,

dogs, coyotes, lions and tigers danced a very agreeable dance, carrying in
their hands the banners of their respective trades: the silversmith car-
ried his instruments, the painters, their paintbrushes and bowls for col-
ors, and thus that day they ate all the bread painted with diverse paints,
some that looked like dolls, others like paintbrushes, others like little
roses or small birds, without being allowed to eat anything else by pre-
cept. (Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la Tierra
Firme, vol. 2, 160)
The description (or re-creation) that Father Durán documented in his

chronicle not only confirms that a religious theater existed but also what
Armando Partida has denominated “ethnodramatic performative expres-
sions,” which embody multiple aspects of pre-Hispanic society within a
clearly dramatic context (Partida, Teatro mexicano: Historia y dramaturgia
[Vol. 2]: Teatro de evangelización en náhuatl 38). Enlisting members of

diverse guilds, the sick, and even those suffering a cold (“arromadizos”),
along with other members of Nahua society, they are evocative of the per-
formances of miracles and sermons in the form of dialogues carried out in
the courtyards of provincial monasteries and the enormous cathedrals of
France, Spain, and Germany throughout the Middle Ages and well into
the Renaissance. These primitive plays, which shared so many aspects
with their pre-Hispanic counterparts, were precisely the ones that served
as a touchstone for the development of dramatic performance in New
Spain, in the guise of missionary theater.
As Ángel María Garibay has pointed out in his fundamental Historia
de la literatura náhuatl (History of Nahuatl Literature), these testimonies
“fully prove” the existence of a rudimentary dramatic literature among the
ancient Mexicans, since
we can already observe in it the division that occurs in all cultures: the
serious and solemn themes, with divine or heroic subjects, and the more
human, merry, and lighthearted subject matter, with traces of crudeness
and a roguish air. This is the same foundation which, in Greece and In-
dia, gave birth to a dual expression: tragic and comic theatrical composi-
tions. Before they were fully developed, they succumbed to their destiny.
Some remainders were left as forgotten flowers. (Garibay, Historia de la
literatura náhuatl, vol. 1, 341)
Some pages of Fray José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias
(The Natural and Moral History of the Indies) also document theatrical ac-
tivities that attest to the existence of a pre- Columbian dramatic tradition.
In this case, it seems to be the same feast described by Durán in the previ-
ous section. In fact, it is very likely that Durán consulted the work of his
Jesuit colleague in order to recreate the circular temple devoted to Quet-
zalcoatl, the feathered serpent, besides the activities that took place there
on the day of the merchants’ feast celebrated by the residents of Cholula.
According to Acosta:
This temple had a medium-sized courtyard where, on the feast day, great
dances and celebrations took place as well as very amusing entremeses,
for which purpose they had placed a little squared theater in the middle
of the courtyard, thirty feet on each side, carefully whitewashed, which
they covered with branches and adorned for that day with all possible
cleanness, enclosing it all with arches created from diverse flowers and
42 · Chapter 1
featherwork, placing many birds, rabbits, and other gentle creatures

here and there, where everyone gathered after eating. The actors came
out and performed entremeses, impersonating the deaf, “arromadizos,”
invalids, the blind, and people with only one arm who came to beseech
the idol to heal them; the deaf talking nonsense; the “arromadizos,”
coughing; the lame people limping and enumerating their miseries and
complaints, which made the public laugh a lot. Others came out repre-
senting the animals, some dressed as beetles, others as toads, and others
as lizards, etc.; there they mentioned their trades; and each one re-
turned, in which case some little flutes were played, which the listeners
liked a lot, because they were very clever, and they also pretended to be
butterflies and birds of diverse colors, sending the temple boys dressed
up as those creatures, and the boys climbed the grove of trees which
had been planted there, the temple priests shot at them with blowpipes,
and amusing sayings in defense of one side and attacking the other were
heard, and this entertained the audience. Afterwards, they held a mi-
tote, or dance, with all those characters and the feast was over; this was
the custom during the main feast days. (Historia natural y moral de las
Indias 277–78)
In this lengthy, highly revealing description, Fray Acosta describes a per-

formance that, owing to its distinct subject matters and representation of
diverse characters, immediately recalls the pilgrimages, miracle plays, and
other genres of “incipient theater” that were likewise performed in the
courtyards of European monasteries, churches, and cathedrals during the
Middle Ages. In fact, the presence of blind and sick individuals who came
to pray for a miracle from their god not only recalls certain European tra-
ditions but also the pilgrimages still held in Mexico (Chalma, San Juan de
los Lagos, the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, etc.), and Spain (San-
tiago de Compostela, the sanctuaries of the Virgin of Covadonga, and
Montserrat, among others).
Evidently these dramatic performances were not limited to the Nahuas
of the valley of Mexico and its environs but were practiced by nearly all
advanced Mesoamerican cultures. In his curious (and subsequent) In-
forme contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatán (Report on the Idol
Worshippers of the Bishopric of Yucatán), dated 1613, Pedro Sánchez de
Aguilar points out that among the Maya “there have been and are frauds
that perform fables and ancient stories” (quoted in Rojas Garcidueñas, El
teatro en la Nueva España en el siglo XVI 22). Likewise, documents con-
cerning a mime performance have been found, and their origin is doubt-
lessly pre-Columbian. A manuscript discovered by historian Nicolás Rangel

and sent to Rojas Garcidueñas seems to be a religious play certified by a
notary of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in which a commissionaire of
this tribunal reasserts the ancient prohibitions against a dance “which they
call tum teleche in their language,” arguing that it is
an evil and superstitious thing, which makes people remember the iniq-
uitous and perverse sacrifices that in their paganism they worshipped
the demon, adoring and venerating him with a sacrifice made of men
and women during said dance, removing their hearts while they were
alive [ . . . ] performing the said dance the way in which they used to
sacrifice men to their idols in such a lively way [ . . . ] that the only thing
lacking [ . . . ] was sacrificing and pulling out the heart of the man who
they made to dance there. (quoted in Rojas Garcidueñas, El teatro en la
Nueva España en el siglo XVI 23)
Rojas Garcidueñas points out that this performance took place during
Christian holidays, a phenomenon that must have amazed and surely up-
set the attending friars.25
As will be demonstrated later, in addition to these historiographical
and documental references, pre-Hispanic artistic representations may
also be found to support the hypothesis of an incipient Mesoamerican
theater, particularly visible in the programs of mural paintings uncov-
ered at Teotihuacan, where one may discover representations of religious
processions in which priests march with finery symbolic of their many
gods and intone sacred hymns, this indicated by the speech scrolls that
emanate from their mouths. These processions and ancient rites, in
which priests and initiates represented the roles of the gods and illus-
trated the divine myths to the people, are perhaps the most ancient ori-
gins of what would become true dramatic action (León-Portilla, “Teatro
náhuatl prehispánico” 16).
The same may be said about Mayan mural painting, and the splendid
fragments uncovered in Bonampak, with their ceremonial processions
and sacred rites that constitute eloquent, albeit mute, evidence of what
may be designated “Middle-American ritual theater.” Additionally, one
may appreciate here, in an entirely pre-Hispanic context, how mural paint-
ing and theater already shared an ancient and intimate relationship, a tra-
dition that was not extinguished after the conquest but persisted and was
transformed, now at the ser vice of entirely new gods.26
44 · Chapter 1
Nahuatl Missionary Theater
After analyzing only a few of the relatively scarce surviving pre- Columbian
dramatic performances, along with their, at times, contrasting interpreta-
tions, it may be stated, almost without a doubt, that the Nahuas did indeed
possess a dramatic tradition worthy of the adjective “theatrical,” not
only in the European sense but also in universal terms, especially if one
considers the most widely accepted notions regarding the definitive
characteristics of this genre. Once this premise is accepted, it may be
affirmed that missionary theater and the programs of contemporary
mural painting discussed in this chapter are among the earliest—if not
the earliest—examples of a syncretic Indo- Christian cultural expression
in Mesoamerica.27 In both cases, European roots with medieval under-
tones may be perceived in these hybrid representations, in conjunction
with pre- Columbian elements, thus creating an artistic-religious con-
struction that is the product of two worlds that, prior to 1492, were en-
tirely unaware of one other.28
The first person to encourage this cultural adaptation was Hernán Cor-
tés himself, who, after defeating the Mexica in 1521, wrote to Emperor
Charles V to ask that he immediately send European friars to Christianize
the Indian communities that had survived the holocaust of the conquest.
In the fourth of his Letters from Mexico, Cortés, recently appointed Mar-
quis of the valley of Oaxaca, reiterates the urgency of sending members of
the clergy to ensure the eternal salvation of the defeated population, be-
cause “until now few or almost none have come and it’s true that they
would obtain great results, therefore I dare remind Your Majesty, and I beg
of you, please, to give the order as soon as possible, because it will be in the
ser vice of God, Our Lord, and thus the wishes that Your Majesty, as a
Catholic, has [expressed] on this matter will be fulfilled” (203). In order to
carry out this enormous task, Cortés submits a practical plan to the em-
peror, in which he proposes that Catholic monks join established Indian
communities. Their activities would include the construction of monas-
teries and churches, as well as the elaboration of religious objects and
other elements that could be used to help spread the Catholic faith:
I think that what we need is for your Sacred Majesty to send monks to
these lands, as I have mentioned; monks who are very zealous in the
aim of converting this population, and to build houses and monasteries
in the provinces here which we think convenient, and that they are
given a part of the tithe to build their houses and sustain their lives; and
the remainder shall be given to churches and for the beautification of

the towns where the Spaniards have settled, and for the monks who
provide their ser vices there. And to have Your Majesty’s officers col-
lect those tithes, and that they account for them, and that they provide
for the said monasteries and churches; this should suffice and be more
than enough, for which Your Majesty will be served. (Letters from
Mexico 203)
The Spanish Crown fully supported his request, and, following the
arrival of the twelve apostolic Franciscans in 1524, the same number of
Dominicans arrived on July 2, 1526. Seven years later, on May 22, 1533,
the Augustinians disembarked, arriving in the capital of New Spain on
July 7 of that year.29
With regard to the way in which the friars undertook the “spiritual con-
quest” of the Indians, Alfonso Reyes (whose appraisals normally hailed
from the Greco-Latin world) recognized that
for the purpose of Catechism, an Indian tradition was adapted. The mis-
sionaries found it easy to employ those floral feasts or “mitotes,” mimes,
dances, customs and masks, feigned mutilations and hunchbacks, paro-
dies of animals, improvised retorts: all of which, according to our point
of view, constituted a mere dramatic embryo, although this theater al-
ready had its heroic and comedic genre, while its stages were located
in the temple of Cholula or the citadel of Tezcoco. (Letras de la Nueva
España 47)
In an effort to qualify his assertion, Reyes points out precisely those

Indian elements that survived the conquest, because, he insists, most of
these were decorative, typically in the form of plants, that is, vegetable and
animal embellishments, as seems to be the case—at least upon first
inspection—with New Spain’s incipient mural painting cycles. Reyes sug-
gests as an example a “religious play from Tlaxcala about the Temptation
(in which), Lucifer, disguised as a hermit, although his horns and claws
were visible, offers Christ, among other earthly pleasures, all the many
and wonderful things of New Spain” (Letras de la Nueva España 51). One
would only need to recall Father Acosta’s description, which includes ref-
erences to flowers, plants, and other objects used as props, to achieve a
clearer idea about the pre-Hispanic nature of such elements that were to
be incorporated into this New World scenography. According to Reyes,
although these early pieces did not consider aesthetics or entertainment as
46 · Chapter 1
their raison d’être, they did contain the essence—or “dramatic embryo”—of
what in later years would become New Spain’s theater, and so he insists:
The nascent theater was a gift of evangelization and catechesis. Its aims
were far from that of being purely and directly aesthetic or as mere en-
tertainment. But this theater began to tug at the cart of comedy and
would lead us to the criollo stage. [ . . . ] Amazed at their own success,
the missionaries conceived true literary displays in order to describe
what that theater had been and we [may] glean as much from their can-
did pages as we might from a bas-relief. The annals of missionary the-
ater are documented from 1533 and began to fade away around 1572.
(Reyes, Letras de la Nueva España 47)
What Reyes fails to point out is the originality of performing theatrical

works in order to gain adepts, that is, as an ideological vehicle for con-
quest.30 According to Fernando Horcasitas, Mexico’s case is unique be-
cause theater was deliberately employed as a means of evangelization, and
European friars used many methods to recruit believers, including “preach-
ing, reading the Gospels, personal example, incorporating already existing
local religious elements—even physical force” (El Teatro náhuatl: Épocas
novohispana y moderna 19). Nevertheless, Horcasitas dismisses any “case
in which theater might have served as a weapon for proselytism. European
drama during the Middle Ages did not have the aim of converting pagan
tribes; instead its objective was to reinforce the faith of populations which
had been Christians for many generations” (ibid.).31
Horcasitas also points out that the reappearance of such theatrical
representations in the New World was principally of a historical nature,
because theater had been an indivisible element of Greco-Latin cul-
tures, and its pagan references had to be stamped out, at all costs. How-
ever, “by the sixteenth century, when Christianity was disseminated in
the Americas, the conditions were radically different. During the prelimi-
nary Golden Age of Spanish literature, theater was no longer associated
with paganism: it was almost exclusively based on Biblical history and
Catholic beliefs” (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 20). Therefore, it was pre-
dictable that the friars would adapt a tradition known in Spain and through-
out the rest of Europe in order to spread the word of a Christian God,
because the uniqueness of so-called missionary theater is to be found pre-
cisely in the fact that, for the first time, dramatic performance was used to
convert societies that had been completely unaware of the religion brought
by the Spaniards.
In order to illustrate how and in what way two representative traditions

of both cultures were interwoven (whether conscientiously or not), and
subsequently gave birth to an original dramatic discourse, the most out-
standing characteristics of European dramatic tradition should first be
briefly outlined. Greco-Latin theater disappeared during the first centu-
ries of Christianity because it was associated with pagan (polytheistic)
representations, which had to be eradicated in order to impose a new reli-
gion based on the life and death of Jesus Christ. Horcasitas, in his already-
cited work, summarizes the transition that led to the birth of a dramatic
performance rooted in New Spain: medieval theater, which is the most
ancient precursor of modern theater, is likewise the most direct ancestor of
that revived in New Spain. According to Horcasitas, because of the Church’s
opposition, by the year 900 almost all memory of classical theater in Europe
had been extinguished; therefore, medieval theater would have to be
something original and not a simple recreation of classical theater, while
concluding that “ironically, it was Christianity itself, which had fought
against dramatic tradition, that was destined, through its liturgy, to beget a
new form of theater, the ancestor of modern drama” (Horcasitas, El Teatro
náhuatl 59).
Like pre-Hispanic theater, that of medieval Europe was constructed as
an interpolation that took place within the context of religious celebrations,
and as such it was a product of the understanding of faith as a social insti-
tution. Therefore, it is not surprising that theater was almost immediately
employed for purposes of evangelization throughout the Franciscan enter-
prises in the New World, because the Nahuas could perfectly relate to this
type of celebration, or mitote, since it had been part of their spiritual and
political life during the years prior to the conquest. In this sense, Horcasi-
tas categorically states that
medieval drama as a genre was born as an interpolation during mass,

which, by the tenth century, started to be occasionally interrupted by
short dialogues in Latin, which lacked any dramatic action. They
were completely rudimentary, but contained the seeds which would
germinate and bear as its fruits Medieval, Renaissance, and modern
theater—including, among all of them, [missionary theater]. (El Teatro
náhuatl 60)
It should be mentioned here that the study of the history of theater in

the Iberian Peninsula during its initial phase is problematic because there
are almost no documents that refer to its existence.32 In fact, the only
48 · Chapter 1
surviving strictly medieval Spanish play is the Auto de los Reyes Magos
(Religious Play of the Three Wise Men), which dates to the twelfth century
and constitutes the only direct textual evidence of such early plays until
the latter part of the fifteenth century. A few scattered works may be as-
signed to this period, although whether these pieces were performed
before an audience is a matter of debate. The literary works of Juan del
Encina (1469– c. 1533), a poet and musician employed by the duke of
Alba, include several eclogues written as theatrical per formances for the
duke’s court, most of which contained religious subject matter. However,
Spanish theater of this period already had begun to show another facet,
beginning with the works of such celebrated dramatists as Bartolomé de
Torres Naharro (ca. 1480–1530) and Lope de Rueda (ca. 1510–1565).
Both writers devoted themselves to lay theater, and both were influenced
by the Italian theatrical trends of their time. Curiously, the only documen-
tary sources that confirm that theatrical plays existed during this long
period prior to the Middle Ages are in the form of prohibitions and laws,
for example, the proclamations of Alfonso X, the Wise (1221–1284), who
banned non sancta performances within churches (Horcasitas, El Teatro
náhuatl 63– 64). Later, in fifteenth- century chronicles, there are descrip-
tions of celebrations in courtly contexts, which include ludi teatrales,
whose true nature remains (based on the information currently available)
at times ambiguous, although it could include everything from buffoonery,
dances, and masquerades to allegorical dramatizations and actual (short)
plays. Likewise, information regarding liturgical celebrations also survives
in ecclesiastical documents from that early period, particularly in cities
such as Valencia and Toledo; in such cases, the theatrical element is excep-
tional, although there is an unquestionable lack of primary texts until the
end of the century.
According to José Rojas Garcidueñas, religious theater, which had
barely reached its peak in Spain during the sixteenth century, had already
begun to wane in the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, “when it arrived to
New Spain, it was given a boost which renewed it with original forms”
(Rojas Garcidueñas, Autos y coloquios del siglo XVI vi). In medieval Eu-
rope, these sacred performances had enjoyed a long tradition, because,
according to Garcidueñas,
already in the distant sixth century, performances in which masks were

frequently used took place in some monasteries, survivors of ancient
theater which had not altogether disappeared. Such performances took
place with increasing levels of development, despite ecclesiastical prohi-
bitions and censorship, which, although they never fully prevented this
new theater, directed it towards consecutive refinements. These plays
were performed within the temples, many times combined with typical
acts of worship, and priests and monks took part. However, due to the
increasing interest which these plays aroused, they had to be moved out-
side, and staged in the churches’ courtyards and in the towns’ streets and
on main squares. (Rojas Garcidueñas, Autos y coloquios del siglo XVI
xvii–xviii)
With regard to its subject matter, function, and textual sources, a clear
foreshadowing of missionary theater may be perceived in these primitive
works, and a short time after the invasion of Mexico-Tenochtitlan this an-
cient dramatic practice would be reinvented, first by Franciscans and later
by Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits:
With subjects taken from the Old and New Testaments, from the lives
of saints and religious legends, theater thrived during the Middle
Ages, and, at its peak, it was cultivated during the great feast days of
the Church and guilds; at that time the performances are events that
draw thousands of spectators, as in the best times Greek theater. (Rojas
Garcidueñas, Autos y coloquios del siglo XVI viii)
Regarding the stages upon which missionary plays were performed, this
precedent also belongs to conventions developed during the Middle Ages.
As there was often not enough space to house the audience inside the reli-
gious structures themselves, the plays were performed in the open, often
in the monastery’s courtyard. The first friars arriving in New Spain would
follow suit, due, in part, to practical concerns, and, to a lesser extent, to the
established pre-Hispanic tradition of performing dances and mitotes on
top of the momoztli, a platform that stood in the middle of the enormous
courtyards built around Mesoamerican temples and pyramids. The ar-
chaeological remains of such constructions have been unearthed not only
in Mexico-Tenochtitlan but also in other important pre-Hispanic ceremo-
nial centers, significantly in Teotihuacan and Tula, two cities of legendary
importance for the development of other, later cultural groups such the
Mexica, also known as the Aztecs.
Although clearly indebted to a European model, the particular nature
of these Indo- Christian works, many of which were performed in Nahuatl,
Zapotec, Mixtec, or Purépecha, is what makes them, according to Alfonso
Méndez Plancarte, at once “strange and very much our own,” this likely
50 · Chapter 1
owing to the fact that these performances are the product of what Rojas
Garcidueñas regards as the “Indian factor.” He concludes that, although
we cannot deny the fact that Mexican theater is descended from medieval
religious plays,
the point of origin fails to explain the special forms which that artistic
genre acquired here, in Mexico, and does not explain the magnificent
climax it achieved during the early period of evangelization. Thus the
Indian factor must be inevitably added to the European factor. (Rojas
Garcidueñas, Autos y coloquios del siglo XVI x)
In his still-influential study of 1933, La conquista espiritual de México

(The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico), Robert Ricard comments on some of
the characteristics that would soon define this renascent dramatic genre,
along with the modifications to which plays were subject for purposes of
evangelization. All these works were based on the sacred scriptures and
their respective interpretations, such as the case of the Auto del sacrificio
de Isaac (Religious Play of the Sacrifice of Isaac), in which
Agar’s episode is presented in Nahuatl in such a way that it is impossible

to understand that she had been the concubine of Abraham, and of his
son Israel, Isaac’s brother. Another very significant example: the source
of the religious play Destrucción de Jerusalén (Destruction of Jerusalem)
is a novel written in Valencia, Spain, by San Pedro Pascal, but the inci-
dent of the starving Jewish mothers who kill and devour their children
is absent from the Mexican version. (Ricard, La conquista espiritual de
México 313)
Such modifications and exclusions were the direct result of a variety of

objectionable pre- Columbian practices that the missionaries were attempt-
ing to stamp out, mainly due to their intrinsic paganism and because they
directly opposed the Christian ideas that had to be spread among their new
catechumens.
In his foundational study of this original theatrical form, Teatro de
evangelización en Nueva España (Evangelization Theater in New Spain),
Othón Arróniz proposes that the first performance of missionary theater
took place around 1533, nine years after the arrival of the twelve apostolic
Franciscans, whom he considers the founders of this genre.33 According to
earlier investigations carried out by Fernando Horcasitas, the document
known as the Manuscrit Mexicain includes the first reference to this earli-
est performance, or exemplum, which is significant, given the fact that it

was written in Nahuatl, probably by one of the scribes (tlacuilos) who had
graduated from the College of San José de los Naturales or another early
institution, such as the Colegio de Indios of Santiago de Tlatelolco.34 The
way in which the appraisal of this representation is reproduced by the In-
dian chronicler is likewise revealing because it would appear that the
Nahua perceived this kind of per formance as some sort of act of purifica-
tion, or ritual exorcism, perhaps due to the fact that works such as these
had not yet achieved the majesty of their own pre-conquest dramatic
performances:
Inic nican pehua in quenin omochihuaya in nexcuitili ejemplo amo tlana-

hualoya, ihuan tlacatecolotl amo mahuiltiaya ica christianos.
Here we begin to tell how the dramatic examples were carried out so
that the Demon would not threaten or fool with the Christians. (quoted
in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 73)
Suitably, this work alludes to the Apocalypse, and it was performed in

Nahuatl on the grounds of the church of Santiago Tlatelolco in 1533.35
Most certainly this was the religious play entitled El juicio final (The Last
Judgment), staged again a few years later in the chapel of San José de los
Naturales, with the archbishop, Don Juan de Zumárraga, and the viceroy,
Don Antonio de Mendoza, in attendance (Arróniz, Teatro de evangeliza-
ción en Nueva España 22).36
Although the models of Indo- Christian dramatic per formances were
gleaned from religious texts produced in previous centuries, according
to Othón Arróniz, this “Mexican exemplum,” called El juicio final, does not
seem to have immediate European sources. He points out that:
the extremely scarce references regarding the subject offer a very differ-
ent meaning than that of the Mexican Exemplum, and, instead of caus-
ing fright and amazement, they caused delight, satire, and laughter, as if
the subject of death and the resurrection of the dead had lost its emo-
tional strength [in Europe]. [ . . . ] There was nothing that could have
served as a model for the severe and apocalyptic Exemplum performed
in Tlatelolco. (Teatro de evangelización en Nueva España 22)
It is worthwhile to point out that the artistic concomitancy of the Last

Judgment also had ancient roots in New Spain, and it seems that the il-
lustrative possibilities that this matter provided turned it into one of the
52 · Chapter 1
first—if not the first—to be used by Franciscans and Dominicans in order

to instill a widespread fear of life after death among their new and terri-
fied catechumens. In his fascinating compilation and analysis of numer-
ous inquisitorial records dating from the early decades of the spiritual
conquest of Mexico, historian Richard Greenleaf registers a document
about two mural paintings whose subject was precisely the Last Judg-
ment, both likely executed before 1536. In his summary of an accusation
included in the “Proceso del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición y el Fiscal
en su nombre contra Gonzalo Gómez, vecino de Michoacán, por judai-
zante, 1536” (Proceedings of the Holy Inquisition and of the Prosecutor
on Its Behalf against Gonzalo Gómez, Resident of Michoacán, Accused
of Being a Judaizer, 1536) (AGN, Inquisición, Vol. 2, File 2), the follow-
ing account appears: “On September 19, 1536, the apostolic inquisitor
Juan de Zumárraga heard Cristóbal de Valderrama, from Michoacán,
formally accuse Gonzalo Gómez of being the son of a reformed heretic”
(61). One of the witnesses who was summoned to testify, a peasant named
Gregorio Gallegos, described, among other blasphemous activities,
Gómez’s comments about a painting which represented the Last Judg-

ment that was located in Uruapan. He said that Gómez had described
them as implausible and arbitrary works. Gallegos finished his state-
ment before Zumárraga asserting that public opinion in Michoacán
knew that Gómez was a bad Christian and a heretic. (Greenleaf 62)
Another witness, Martín Jofre, reported that
Gómez had talked with Jofre about the painting in Uruapan and an-
other one in Toluca, almost cynically giving his opinion that Domini-
cans and Franciscans had painted the same painting of Judgment Day
in two different ways, each of the orders giving itself a greater impor-
tance. (Greenleaf 63)
Although neither of these two early paintings has survived, they allow
one to infer that during the first decades after the conquest there were
indeed many instances of paintings with this subject matter, and that it had
even reached the isolated region of the Purépecha, who were never sub-
ject to the Mexicas, in part because they had developed a technique to
make weapons with copper points, a technology that was unknown to other
Mesoamerican civilizations. This was the same region where, around
the same time, Vasco de Quiroga, armed with a copy of Thomas More’s
Utopia, would establish several Indian Utopian communities around

Lake Pátzcuaro.
To return to the main focus of this chapter, it should be considered first
and foremost that both mural painting and missionary theater were efforts
aimed at overcoming the communication barriers that existed between
the evangelizers and their neophytes, while these new religious concepts
were rapidly being translated into their respective indigenous language.
Nonetheless, and as may be easily understood, the native population had a
difficult time grasping them. Second, with regard to mural painting, the
friars adopted pre-Hispanic representational modes with a definite Indian
character, for example, mosaics done in feathers, the so-called Testerian
codex, and the “pictorial canvas,” as shall be seen in the next chapter.37
Therefore, mural painting is a twofold syncretic expression: on the one
hand, because it is the combined representation of two “antithetical” cul-
tures, and, on the other, because it is a hybrid expression, that is, both a
pictographic and a literary representation, whose iconographic models are
found both in Christian texts and pre-Hispanic religious practices exe-
cuted in the form of a codex or preserved through oral tradition among
ancient Mexicans.38 An emblematic example of this phenomenon in New
Spain is found in the Augustinian monastery at Acolman, where, accord-
ing to Manuel Toussaint, the adornment of a vault was modeled upon the
frontispiece of the Confesionario breve (Brief Confessional) written in Na-
huatl by Fray Alonso de Molina (also the author of the Vocabulario en
lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana), since it includes “a
monogram of Jesus, conceived within flowery ornamentations and which
has its origins in the engraving of the title page of Fray Alonso de Molina’s
Confesionario breve, printed by Antonio de Espinosa, in Mexico, in 1569”
(Toussaint, Arte colonial de México 66) (figures 3a, b, pp. 12–13).
It should be recalled that colonial mural painting in Mexico and mis-
sionary theater are both defined by “their goal to demonstrate Christian
dogmas, rather than by a deliberate formalist structure” (Arróniz, Teatro de
evangelización en Nueva España 7) and, as in the case of missionary the-
ater, “this surprising approach to verisimilitude was one of the most over-
whelming elements faced by the Indian psyche, since they were used to
contemplating religious matters on an abstract, mythical plane” (21). This
astonishment is clearly revealed in the annals of the Indian chronicler
Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Cuauhtle-
huanitzin, who assigns the representation (in Nahuatl: tlamauizolli—
“miraculous”/nexcuitilli—“exemplum”) of the end of the world to the year
two-calli (1533):
54 · Chapter 1
Auh za no ycuac ynin mochiuh y neyxcuitilli yn ompa Santiago Tlatil-

ulco Mexico yehuatl ca ynic tlamiz cemanahuatl, ce[n] ca quimahuizoque
yn mizahuique yn Mexica. (Chimalpahin, 1889/1965, 228)
And that was also when a play was performed there in Santiago Tlate-
lolco in Mexico about how the world will come to its end; the Mexi-
cans were marveled and frightened. (quoted in Horcasitas, El teatro
náhuatl 562)
Unfortunately, few iconographic programs in open chapels, which

doubtlessly were the stages of many Indo- Christian dramatic performances,
have been preserved.39 However, one of the most impressive examples that
has survived over four centuries of abandonment is a type of visual sermon
reproduced in the mural cycle adorning the interior of the open chapel at
Actopan, Hidalgo, an Augustinian monastery built in the middle of the
sixteenth century under the direction of Fray Andrés de Mata. This site,
located in front of a large parcel of level ground (usually called the atrium),
preserves iconographic elements that immediately bring to mind the
“Mexican exemplum” described by Chimalpahin, because they share the
same subject matter: the Last Judgment (figure 9). To date, the document
that served as a model for the execution of these mural paintings remains
unknown, but it is very likely to be found in a dialogical sermon not unlike
the one that Arróniz points out as the model for the dramatic performance
Figure 9. San Nicolás Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. General view of the mural paint-
ing representing the Last Judgment found in the upper section of its open chapel. Here
the direct influence of contemporary architectural treatises such as that of Sebastiano
Serlio may be clearly perceived in the vault’s use of trompe l’oeil imagery. The first
volume of this treatise was published in Venice in 1537. These texts were quickly trans-
lated into other languages, including Castilian, beginning in 1552. This mural paint-
ing program, dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, was discovered and
restored in the early 1970s by Juan Benito Artigas Hernández. (Photo by Michael
Schuessler.)
of El juicio final, staged twenty years earlier by the Franciscans at Tlate-

lolco, the same year the Augustinians arrived in New Spain (1533).40
Arróniz concludes his analysis by proposing an attractive hypothesis re-
garding the origins of this foundational work of Indo- Christian literature:
As for the text, one would get the impression that the Juicio is an adapted
transcription, for dramatic purposes, of some passages of one of those
bilingual Doctrinas cristianas (Christian Doctrines) which were then
beginning to circulate in monasteries. [ . . . ] The instruction continues
to narrate, in a representational medium, what we have seen in the
Exemplum: “Then, suddenly, the Earth will open and will unexpect-
edly devour all non- Christians” (Teatro de evangelización en Nueva
España 29)
Although plays from that time written or directed by members of the

Augustinian order have yet to appear, it would be unreasonable to con-
clude that they had not taken advantage of the great open spaces of their
monasteries and “Indian chapels” to carry out evangelistic representations,
since one of the most recurrent characteristics of monastic architecture
is, precisely, the development of open spaces designed for ceremonies
en masse. These spaces include open chapels (Actopan, Epazoyucan),
processional chapels (Atlatlahuacan), and “balcony chapels,” with reduced
proportions (Acolman).
The communicative practice that combines plastic and dramatic ele-
ments was repeated a few years later with the staging of a play entitled La
batalla de los salvajes (The Battle of the Savages), which is interesting be-
cause, among other aspects, it is one of the first examples of a subject mat-
ter that is not entirely doctrinal within the repertoire of New Spain’s
incipient theater.41 The play was performed in 1539 and was documented
by Bartolomé de las Casas and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, respectively, al-
though its original manuscript has been lost. In this case, the dramatic
performance (at least as it is described in the surviving chronicles) imme-
diately recalls the theme of the mural paintings found in the nave of the
church at the Augustinian monastery at Itzmiquilpan, also designed by
friar-architect Andrés de Mata. Fernando Horcasitas is perhaps the first
scholar to posit the relation between a particular work of missionary the-
ater and the cycle of mural painting at Itzmiquilpan (ca. 1580). In chapter
27 of El teatro náhuatl: Épocas novohispana y moderna (Nahuatl Theater
of New Spain and the Modern Age), he compares the characteristics of
56 · Chapter 1
both representations—one a play, the other a cycle of mural painting.

According to Horcasitas, the paintings found in this monastery share at
least five characteristics with the play described by Díaz del Castillo and
Bartolomé de Las Casas in their respective chronicles:
1. A battle in a forest full of fantastic plants and flowers.

2. Fantastic animals appear in the forest.
3. Two groups of warriors do battle. One group carries clubs, the other,
bows and arrows.
4. Some of the hunter-warriors carry severed human heads.
5. Itzmiquilpan is located in the heart of the Otomí zone, on the bor-
der of the region of the nomad hunters. (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl:
Épocas novohispana y moderna 503)
He immediately compares four of these five details with the dramatic

work described by Díaz del Castillo and Las Casas, because in the play
Batalla de los salvajes the following elements are represented:
1. A battle staged in a forest full of flowers.

2. Numerous real animals appear in the forest.
3. Two groups of warriors fight. One group carries bent sticks, and the
other, bows and arrows.
4. ???
5. Las Casas mentions the “otomitlh,” in reference to the scene with the
hunters in Tlaxcala. (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 503–504)
Horcasitas finishes this section of his study by setting forth the hypoth-
esis that La batalla de los salvajes is of pre-Hispanic origin, that it repre-
sents some sort of ancient rite or event, and that it is somehow connected
to Itzmiquilpan’s paintings (El Teatro náhuatl 504).
Nonetheless, in his analysis of Itzmiquilpan’s mural painting cycle, art
historian Olivier Debroise sets forth an original theory regarding the
historical context for the conception of these images. According to him,
the program of mural paintings executed in the nave of this provincial
church was inspired by a “ser vice codex” addressed to Philip II by Otomí
noblemen from that distant region who describe, among other things,
some of the parades, processions, and dances that commemorated the vic-
tory over the region’s fearsome Chichimec warriors. As we shall see in
chapter 3, although it is true that this codex recounts events that occurred
from pre-Hispanic times until the so-called Chichimec War, it seems to
have been written in the early eighteenth century, that is, 150 years after
the mural painting program at Itzmiquilpan was created, an aspect that
legitimately challenges any intimate relationship with the mural paintings
in question.
With these ideas in mind, I trust that the results of my investigations as
set forth in the following chapters will resolve a series of issues that will
guide scholars, in the words of Octavio Paz, toward a “literature of foun-
dation” (“Literatura de fundación” 15). Consequently, through a detailed
analysis of the genesis and development of mural painting in New Spain,
it will be seen how and in what ways this mode of artistic expression has
been connected to dramatic performance throughout its history, both in
the new and the old. Furthermore, I will carefully analyze the two in-
stances that have been considered heretofore and that clearly illustrate
said affinity: El juicio final and its connection to the mural paintings in
the Augustinian monastery at Actopan and Gonzalo de las Casas’s Guerra
de los chichimecas (War of the Chichimec), among other historiographical
and epistolary documents of the time, and the manner in which they were
re- created in the form of an enigmatic mural painting program found in
the Augustinian monastery at Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo.
Chapter Two
Renascent Genres in
New Spain
The Evangelization of the Imaginary: Catechesis

and Education in New Spain
Both the genesis and development of New Spain’s missionary theater, ana-
lyzed in the previous chapter, were an almost exclusive product of a didac-
tic tradition born during the European Middle Ages and based on a
rudimentary dramatic performance, although modified in order to adapt
to a unique situation: the spiritual conquest of the natives of New Spain.1
Although there are documents that record the survival of what may be
considered dramatic elements drawn from pre-Columbian representations,
they are few and far between, and just as in the case of mural painting,
their expression was relegated, with few exceptions, to decorative motifs: the
scenography, the re-creation of plants and animals, the embellishment of
pictorial borders, and so on. However, as James Lockhart has pointed out,
any convincing evidence of a “Nahua presence” in these primitive dramatic
works from New Spain may be detected through a neophilological analy-
sis of said texts, because one may discover within them numerous in-
stances of hypercorrect orthography, references to a pre-Hispanic social
order, as well as the incorporation of certain characters, beliefs, and the way
in which these were expressed, that may be recognized as pertaining to the
pre-Hispanic era and culture. These examples will be duly analyzed in the
section devoted to Andrés de Olmos’s Auto del juicio final.
With regard to Indian participation or co-participation in the creation
of these incipient dramatic works, Lockhart concludes:
58
Renascent Genres in New Spain · 59
Now that we have begun to have a better understanding of the extent to

which Spanish friars depended on their Indian assistants to produce
Nahuatl texts, even those for which they claimed authorship, we have
naturally sought evidence of Nahua participation in the writing of these
[works] (which were not usually assigned to any author in the original
version). A strong sign of a Nahua role may be found in the way that
the material was adapted; as we shall see, the characters take on Nahua
ranks and operate within the context of Nahua social and dialogic con-
ventions. However, it is not altogether unthinkable that a clever and
knowledgeable friar may have deliberately made such adaptations, in
order to better reach his audience. (Lockhart, The Nahuas after the
Conquest 401)
Despite the possibility that a friar who was fluent in Nahuatl and knowl-
edgeable about pre-Hispanic culture might have been able to adapt these
evangelistic works to their indigenous context in order to better reach his
audience, the original texts were most certainly altered, and, as has been
seen, the resulting product was something new.2
The prior of the Franciscan monastery at Tlaxcala, Fray Toribio de Be-
navente, also known as Motolinia (in Nahuatl, “the poor one”), documents
and describes in detail the importance of Indian participation in the copy-
ing of such manuscripts, because, according to the chronicler, they were
amazingly accurate, skillfully reproducing anything that their European
teachers asked them to:
They learned to write in a short period of time, because a few days after
having learned to write, they then imitate the subject matter that their
teachers provide them with, and if the teacher changes his handwriting,
since it’s common for different men to trace letters in different ways,
they then also change their handwriting and do it in the way that their
teacher shows them. [ . . . ] They have also learned to bind and illumi-
nate books, and some of them do this very well, and they make perfect
copies from the start, so that everyone who sees them is marveled; I
have some extraordinary samples of [these images].3 (Motolinia, Histo-
ria de los indios de la Nueva España 169)
This quotation underscores several important points: first, Indians

quickly became expert copyists and most of them could easily reproduce
any letter or picture “from life” to perfection. Second, from early on, the
natives actively participated in the task of copying and illuminating
60 · Chapter 2
manuscripts, achieving “perfectly copied figures.” This important eyewit-

ness testimony raises several doubts, most particularly in cases of icono-
graphic or linguistic expressions that include pre-Hispanic elements; in
light of Motolinia’s commentary, this phenomenon should not necessarily
be automatically attributed to the Indian artist’s lack of skill and familiar-
ity with the themes at hand.4
The first person in charge of educating the recently conquered Indi-
ans was Pedro de Gante, founder of the Colegio de Indios at San José
de los Naturales; the most admirable graduate of this school was the
extraordinary mestizo Diego Valadés, author of the illustrated Rhetorica
Christiana (Christian Rhetoric), published during his sojourn in Perugia
in 1579.5 Gerónimo de Mendieta, author of the Historia eclesiástica indi-
ana (Indian Ecclesiastical History), recalls some of the features of this
first “Indian university,” founded by the lay Franciscan Pedro de Gante
in 1523, a year prior to the arrival of the celebrated twelve apostolic
Franciscans:
New Spain’s first and only seminar for every kind of trades and crafts
[ . . . ] was the chapel called San José, where the most venerable servant
of the Lord and famous lay brother Fray Pedro de Gante lived for many
years; he was first and foremost a teacher and an industrious tutor of
Indians. He endeavored to have the older boys learn the Spaniards’
trades and arts, which their parents did not know, and improve those
that were used before. For this purpose, at the back of that chapel, he set
up some rooms where the Indians were gathered, and he had them first
practice the most common trades, such as that of tailor, carpenter, painter,
and others of the kind, and, afterwards, more sophisticated vocations
[ . . . ] in that way, and before long, many more [Indians] than our offi-
cials would have liked had learned these trades.6 (Mendieta, Historia
eclesiástica indiana 407– 408)
Mendieta’s last phrase is highly revealing: it seems that the Indians were
such accomplished artisans, tailors, carpenters, and so on that through for-
mal training at the college many began to compete with Spanish artists and
craftsmen, a situation that was not lost on local officials. Surely those offi-
cials were members of the incipient guilds of painters, tailors, and car-
penters who had recently arrived from the Iberian Peninsula or other
parts of the Spanish Empire and who consequently attempted to prevent
the Indians from implementing their knowledge and skills to construct
and decorate both religious and lay buildings.7
A concrete example of this situation may be found in a letter con-

served in the Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Na-
tion), in which the Dutch (Lutheran) printer Cornelio Adriano César,
imprisoned at the monastery of Tlatelolco, addresses his complaints to co-
lonial authorities:
I ask and implore Your Lordship to order the said Guardian Father to
refrain from insulting me and threatening me with unfair words, be-
cause I do what I am ordered to, that if it pleases Your Lordship, do not
let them treat me this way [ . . . ] because he expects me to teach and
show my art to the Indians, so they can learn from me, and once they
have learned, and my sentence is completed (in the ser vice of the Lord),
I will not be able to make a living from my said trade, because once
the Indians know how to do it, there will be no profit. (quoted in Reyes-
Valerio, Arte indocristiano 112)
Undoubtedly, the themes that have been discussed up to this point

with regard to theater and writing (copying) may be applied, with few
modifications, to the case of New Spain’s mural paintings, because, within
the context of the adornment of religious buildings by European friars
and their Indian assistants, pre-Hispanic influences are mostly limited to
those decorative spaces found in the margins of the painting’s main sub-
ject matter, far removed from religious subjects and sacred themes and
limited to the marginalia, traditionally comprised of grottesco elements
that are commonly found in “de romano” painting.8 On many occasions,
these elements include the recreation of fantastic beasts, plants, flowers,
and other phytomorphic motifs that in the mid-twentieth century were
baptized with the Nahuatl neologism tequitqui by art historian José
Moreno Villa.9
Chapter 8, book 10, of his Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva
España (General History of the Things of New Spain) contains a Libro de
vicios y virtudes (Book of Vices and Virtues), in which Fray Bernardino de
Sahagún considers two kinds of painters: the good and bad, the lazy and
industrious.10 Based on the par ticular kind of pictorial works used as ex-
amples, it may be inferred that the friar was referring to the Indian paint-
ers, or tlacuilos:
Through his craft the painter must know how to use colors or to draw or
outline images with charcoal or how to mix the colors well and how to
grind and mix them well. The good painter is very skilled and charming
62 · Chapter 2
when he paints and he considers with care what he is going to paint and
he blends the paint well and he knows how to make shadows and back-
grounds, and how to paint leaf motifs. The bad painter has a dreadful
and dull talent and that is why he is pitiful and irritating, and he fails to
fulfill the hope of the person who commissions the work, and his paint-
ings lack luster and are poorly blended. Everything is confusing; his
paintings lack both proportion and scale because he paints in haste.
(Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España 596–97)
In his description, Sahagún fails to mention the most imperative picto-

rial subject matters for the decoration of Christian temples, such as bibli-
cal scenes and portraits of saints. Rather, he focuses on the “shadows and
the backgrounds and leaf motifs,” almost always the task of the Indian
painter, who was relegated to filling in the iconographic gaps with their
original (and ornamental) art.
The official motives behind this prohibition are to be found in the Or-
denanzas de pintores y doradores de 1557 (Decrees Concerning Painters and
Gilders of 1557), which stipulates that:
Owing to the great irreverence towards the Holy Scriptures when they
are made by Indians and other persons who have neither learned said
trades, nor know anything about them, thus damaging the Republic
and leading to a lack of devotion when they do so, a remedy to this situ-
ation may be achieved by simply having magistrates and ecclesiastical
inspectors for the said trades as everything else has been expressed in
the said Decrees [sic] in the new ones which include their motives, and
as this city and the kingdom are flooded with bad paintings, due to the
lack of Decrees which are to be complied with, therefore I request and
implore Your Lordship that, having submitted the said power and Testi-
mony, along with the copy of the points for a new decree, to proceed to
order the said trades and to implore His Excellency the Viceroy of this
New Spain to approve and confirm them. (quoted in Toussaint, La pin-
tura en México durante el siglo XVI 220)
Having established the undeniable (and invaluable) participation of the

Indians in the transcription, composition, creation, and illustration of
the first texts produced in New Spain, as well as their contribution to the
construction and embellishment of religious buildings, the intimate rela-
tionship shared by these two aesthetic- doctrinal expressions should be
emphasized, since they have a common history and share a parallel devel-
opment. Both are the result of a rapid communicative evolution, through

theater and painting, which was developed by Franciscans and afterward
by Dominicans and Augustinians. During the early years of the spiritual
conquest of Mexico, the greatest obstacle to the effective evangelization of
thousands of “pagan” souls was essentially linguistic in nature.11 There-
fore, the first missionaries were forced to invent (or adopt) methods of edu-
cation and indoctrination that could be immediately understood by their
Indian neophytes, including, on the one hand, mimicry and improvised
exempla, and, on the other hand, pictorial canvases and Testerian codices.
In his Historia eclesiástica indiana, Mendienta remembers the resource-
fulness of the clever Fray Testera, inventor of the codex that bears his
name, while explaining its historical context:
Fray Jacobo de Testera was of French nationality [ . . . ] he came to this

region of New Spain with Fray Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo in 1529; as
he could not learn the language of the Indians as fast as he wished, in
order to preach in their language, because his spirit could not suffer any
delay (as he was so fervent), he took to preaching in another way, by
means of an interpreter, bringing along a canvas in which all the mys-
teries of our Catholic faith were painted, and an Indian skilled in his
language interpreted everything the servant of God said, to the great
benefit of the Indians, and also through the frequent use of performances.
(Mendienta, Historia eclesiástica indiana 665)
Apart from having (miraculously) found a French- speaking native as-

sistant, Testera is credited for having introduced several catechism man-
uals based on the same technique and that required the use of an Indian
translator: they are known as “Testerian codices” (Fernández, La Jerusalén
indiana 182).12 Evidently, these codices were inspired by the drawings on
fig bark (amatl) paper, which the pre-Hispanic scribes had created prior
to the arrival of the Spaniards, and their recreation as a Christian codex
is a fundamental example of the cultural exchanges, material substitu-
tions, and iconographic loans that were practiced by both Indians and
Spaniards.
Thanks to Mendieta’s description of Testera’s evangelizing techniques,
one may more clearly see how preaching and painting went hand in hand,
until they developed into two divergent expressions of artistic representa-
tion: missionary theater and mural painting, two distinct genres, both of
which shared the same purpose of converting the Indians to the new faith.13
Although both genres quickly became independent from one another, this
64 · Chapter 2
process was not entirely complete, since the images that had been painted
on the walls of monasteries, open chapels, processional chapels,14 and
other religious constructions frequently served as the embellished stages
for the first missionary plays, which was a logical and practical combina-
tion because their subject matter was at times identical.
John McAndrew, in his monumental study of sixteenth-century Mexi-
can architecture (The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico),
also documents the success of teaching through images (particularly
among those who had not learned Nahuatl, Middle America’s lingua
franca) and refers to Father Mendieta regarding the matter of the previously
mentioned pictorial canvases. On this occasion, the Indian interpreter has
disappeared and the friar simply uses a staff to point out themes from the
Gospels:
The friars who were not proficient in the [local] languages sometimes
adopted an ingenious mechanism in order to teach and preach. The
articles of faith were painted on a canvas; on another, the Ten Com-
mandments; and on another, the seven sacraments; or whatever subject
matter from Christian doctrine was required. When the friar wanted to
preach about the commandments, the said canvas was hung next to him.
He could point with his staff to the section he wanted, and thus he
could clearly express the whole doctrine. (McAndrew, The Open-Air
Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico 71)
In his Rhetorica Christiana (Christian Rhetoric), Diego Valadés, the

distinguished theologian, humanist, and, as previously mentioned, the first
recorded mestizo friar of New Spain, emphasizes that “this new method of
teaching” was exclusively and originally the work of his Franciscan brethren
and records this important fact in order to vindicate it “as ours [and] of all
those members of the Order of Saint Francis”:15
Through printed images of passages [from the Scriptures] we may learn

about their content. Therefore, the monks, having to preach to the Indi-
ans, use in their sermons admirable and even unknown figures to instill
the divine doctrine with greater perfection and objectivity. With this
objective, they have canvases upon which the main tenets of Christian
religion have been painted, such as the Symbol of the Apostles, the
Decalogue, the Seven Deadly Sins and Sacraments. All of this has been
arranged in a very clever way; that invention, by the way, was a very at-
tractive and significant one. [ . . . ] Therefore, the authors of such inven-
tion deserve eternal praise. We—all the members of Saint Francis’

Order who were the first to diligently work to adopt this new teaching
method—vindicate that honor, with full rights, as ours. [ . . . ] This method
was discovered to be exceedingly suitable, because the success that was
achieved in the conversion of souls through its use was most comfort-
ing. (quoted in Palomera, Fray Diego Valadés 141)
Unfortunately, given their ephemeral nature, none of these canvases

remains; however, Valadés includes in his work an engraving that repre-
sents a friar indoctrinating countless infidels, using a canvas that contains
(like a comic strip) several scenes representing Christ’s Passion as a visual
example of this “new teaching method” (figure 10). Remarkably, accord-
ing to McAndrew, the front altarpiece of Amecameca’s (Estado de México)
church includes a bas-relief reproduction of several images, indicating the
original nature of this primitive instructional method (The Open- Air
Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico 71). Although this novel represen-
tational device addressed an exceptional need faced by the first mission-
aries, McAndrew points out that similar canvases were used in fairs by
Spanish minstrels during the Middle Ages; the minstrels employed a series
of images drawn upon a canvas in order to illustrate episodes of their lengthy
narrative ballads. New Spain’s religious images, which retain an identical
format, may be adaptations of that popular art (72).16 These canvases, de-
scendants of a medieval Spanish tradition that had become obsolete, were
reborn in New Spain, owing to the urgent need to instruct the Indians in
Christian doctrine. In this sense, they may be considered a unique expres-
sion, more so than theater, mural painting, or other forms of indoctrina-
tion used shortly afterward, and perhaps may be comparable only to the
open chapels where they were occasionally displayed. In the upper left-
hand section of another engraving, also included in Valadés’s illustrated
work, and entitled Organización franciscana de la evangelización en México
(Franciscan Organization of Mexico’s Evangelization), an image of a friar
(Pedro de Gante) using this kind of pictorial canvas is included, by means
of which the parishioners discunt omina [learn all things] (figure 11). In a
footnote, Valadés explains the image’s content:
The purpose is to instill Christian doctrine through figures and shapes,

drawn on very wide fabric, and quite conveniently arranged; beginning
with the articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments of God’s Law, and
the Deadly Sins; and this is done with great skill and care. (quoted in
Palomera, Fray Diego Valadés 139)
Figure 10. Diego Valadés, Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579). One of the
256 engravings included in this exceptional book, which, in this case, doc-
uments how the Franciscans developed the method of teaching through
images in New Spain. (Photo taken from the Internet.)
Figure 11. Diego Valadés, Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579). Engraving from
the aforementioned book represents the educational and religious activities car-
ried out within the precincts of a Franciscan monastery. (Photo taken from the
Internet.)
68 · Chapter 2
Fray Pedro de Gante makes an observation that suggests the pre-

Hispanic origin of an object similar to the pictorial canvas, used by the In-
dians during their celebrations, or mitotes, dedicated to their gods.17 In a
passage of the “Carta de Fr. Pedro de Gante, al Rey D. Felipe II” (Letter
from Fray Pedro de Gante to His Majesty Philip II), included in the Códice
Franciscano (Franciscan Codex), the mendicant friar declares that, besides
dances, songs, and other surviving pre-Hispanic customs, the Indians also
used “liveries in order to dance with them”
as they worshiped their gods with songs and dances, because when they
had to sacrifice someone for a particular reason, for having defeated
their enemies or for temporary needs, before they killed them they
danced before the idol; and having seen this and that all their chants
were devoted to their gods, I composed some very solemn verses about
God’s Law and faith, and how God became man in order to save man-
kind, and how he was born from the Holy Virgin, while she remained
pure and immaculate; and that was about two months before Christ-
mas, and I gave them liveries to paint on the blankets with which they
danced, because that was their custom, according to the dances and
songs that they sang, thus they dressed in celebration or mourning or
victory. (Códice Franciscano 206–207)
Undoubtedly, the subsequent introduction of the printing press in

Mexico by Giovanni Paoli (Juan Pablos) in 1539 was the deciding factor
responsible for the imposition of both iconographic and dramatic subject
matter in New Spain through illustrated books, whose images and texts, in
turn, frequently determined the subject matter of mural painting as well
as the plots and general characteristics of the incipient dramatic produc-
tions in New Spain.18 In a letter compiled by Miguel León-Portilla and
included in his chapter La utopía mexicana del siglo XVI: Lo bello, lo ver-
dadero y lo bueno (Sixteenth- Century Mexican Utopia: Beauty, Truth, and
Goodness), Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop of New Spain, for-
mally requests the Council of the Indies to be provided with a printing
press, a mill, and even a library:
Also, because it seems that having a printing press and a paper mill over
there would be a most useful and convenient thing, and since there are
people who would take pleasure in going there, if Your Majesty would
do the favor of supporting the arts, Your Lordship and Your Worship
might provide for them. [ . . . ] Also, there is much need and it would be
very charitable for all that land needs a good library, due to the doubts
which frequently arise over there. [ . . . ] Also, because the sons of the
natives that learn with the monks are much given to ecclesiastical chants,
the monks beg Your Majesty for some song books and missals. (quoted
in Tovar et al., La utopía mexicana del siglo XVI 54)
The books published shortly after the arrival of the printing press in
New Spain included the Doctrina breve (Brief Doctrine) by Zumárraga,
the Escala espiritual (Spiritual Ladder) by Saint John Climacus, translated
from the Latin by Fray Juan de la Magdalena (curiously, an Augustinian
monk from Itzmiquilpan), and other volumes illustrated with engravings
that were published locally, for example, the Confessionario mayor en len-
gua mexicana y castellana (Major Confessional in the Mexican and
Castilian Languages) by Alfonso de Molina, published thirty years later
(1569), which includes a frontispiece that, as has been mentioned, cor-
responds to an important element of the mural cycle preserved in the
Augustinian monastery at Acolman and mentioned at the end of chapter
1. These books, along with others sent from Europe, quickly became the
natural models for most of New Spain’s mural painting, while the sub-
jects with which they dealt were those also adopted by missionary
theater.19
It is no surprise to discover the positive reaction of the Indians to these
illustrations, both those printed in New Spain as well as those imported
from Europe, since they could easily grasp such narrative imagery. This
reaction has been commented upon in extenso by several chroniclers, most
notably Sahagún and Motolinia. For example, said propensity is summari-
zed in another passage taken from the Códice Franciscano, this one devoted
to El orden que los Religiosos tienen en enseñar á los indios la Doctrina, y
otras cosas de policía cristiana (Of the Order with Which the Monks Teach
the Doctrine to the Indians and Other Issues of Christian Policy):
Some monks have become used to teaching the doctrine to the Indians
and to preaching with the use of paintings, according to the ancient use
which they had and still retain; since they did not have an alphabet,
they communicated and were able to understand everything they de-
sired through paintings, which they used as books, and they do the same
today, although without the same curiosity. I consider that this is very
wise and beneficial for these people, because experience has taught us
that where they have been taught the Christian doctrine with paintings,
the Indians from those towns understand our holy Catholic faith better
70 · Chapter 2
and it has taken deeper roots in them. At least one thing I understand
that would be most useful for the Christianization of these natives and
to have our faith take root in them in a brief time as in other nations,
and that would be to have in every school where children are gathered
to teach them how to read and write, as well as the doctrine; that the
same Christian doctrine be painted in the most convenient way for their
understanding, studying the ones that the Monks have made for that
purpose and taking the best among them; and through them make the
boys understand at their tender age the mysteries of our faith, because
what one learns at that time is naturally imprinted in memory; we as-
sume that the best way in which Indians may perceive them is through
painting. (Códice Franciscano 59– 60)
Initially, the forerunners of what would quickly become dramatic per-

formances in New Spain may be found in the exempla that a resourceful
friar and his catechumens may have improvised before a group of curious
natives, although its final product would eventually become missionary
theater per se, a manifestation of which survives to this day in the popu-
lar Christmas posadas and in the more refined expression of this tradi-
tional per formance, in the guise of sacramental religious plays, known
in Spanish as the Auto Sacramental.20 Miguel Ángel Fernández states
that Fray Toribio de la Caldera was the creator of an improvised exem-
plum, given that
in order to conjure up the torments of Hell, he placed a boiling cauldron—

hence his surname—into which he threw several innocent animals:
hardly a Franciscan attitude, by the way. This, however, pales in com-
parison with another missionary of the epoch who went as far as to throw
himself over hot coals in order to illustrate the future sufferings of eter-
nal damnation. (La Jerusalén indiana 180)
McAndrew discovers some interesting data about this kind of dramatic

improvisation in the 1583 work of Diego Muñoz Camargo, author of the
Descripción de la Provincia de los Apóstoles San Pedro y San Pablo en las
Indias de la Nueva España (Description of the Province of the Apostles
Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the Indies of New Spain). In his work, Muñoz
Camargo mentions a performance regarding the end of the world, a popu-
lar subject among Franciscans and one that may be found both in incipi-
ent plays as well as in mural painting programs that adorned open chapels,
processional chapels, and the naves of certain churches:
Every once in a while, other visual forms were tested. For example, a
friar who did not speak any local language, but who managed to preach
through interpreters and dramatic presentations: “In order to show what
the punishments of Hell would be, in the courtyard of a Church in
Jalisco, he dug a hole, deep like a furnace with an enormous mouth and
he gave orders that dogs, cats, and other animals should be thrown in-
side it; and when the fire was lighted, they howled dreadfully, and the
Indians were scared by such a terrifying spectacle, and they subsequently
avoided offending God.” (McAndrew 72)
McAndrew also provides relevant information that documents the

European prototypes (in this case, Italian and Spanish) of this variety of
dramatic per formance that echoes the early development of theatrical
representations in New Spain:
Similar performances had been common in fifteenth-century Florence;

and, in Rome, at the time the most civilized and sophisticated city of
Christendom, a great statue of the Madonna was levitated above a plat-
form with artificial clouds, during the celebrations at the Pantheon, on
Assumption Day. [ . . . ] From the fourteenth century, in Santa María
de Elche, in South-Eastern Spain, every year, on Assumption Day, four
children dressed as angels ascend the soul of the Virgin, up to 150 feet,
to an artificial cloud that is suspended from the skylight. The religious
plays to which it belongs were not in Spanish; rather, as in Mexico, they
were performed in the local language. Such performances were forbid-
den by the Council of Trent and most of them had already ended in
Europe. These particular censorships at Trent do not seem to have had
much effect in Mexico. (McAndrew 73)
In a study that traces the Indian contribution to New Spain’s colonial

sculpture, Arte indocristiano (Indo- Christian Art), Constantino Reyes-
Valerio speculates about the existence of archival records that might docu-
ment the direct participation of Mexican Indians in the creation of religious
spaces. He concludes that “the documents which directly prove their artis-
tic participation in temples and monasteries are unfortunately very scarce,
since, on the one hand, Indians were not given contracts to carry out this
or that task, as was the case of Europeans, and, on the other hand, the re-
ligious orders’ archives have either been lost or have yet to be discovered”
(9). The testimonies that to this day attest to Indian involvement in these
primitive works—architectural, sculptural, and pictorial—may be found in
72 · Chapter 2
the chronicles of those missionaries who were closely involved in their

design and development, such as Bernardino de Sahagún, author of the
previously mentioned Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España. In
an “account by the author which is worthy of mention,” from chapter 27 of
the tenth book of this work, the author is amazed at the surprising skill the
Indians exhibited for “mechanical trades,” surely learned at the recently
founded Colegio de San José de los Naturales. The Franciscan remarks
that
we know by experience that [the Indians] are very skilled in learning

and carrying out mechanical trades, according to what the Spanish
know and use, such as geometry, that is, building, and they understand
and carry them out as the Spanish; also, the trade of masonry and stone
cutting and carpentry; also, the trades of tailors and shoemakers, silk
working, printers, clerks, readers, accountants, plainsong singers, organ
singers; playing flutes, shawms, sackbuts, trumpets, organs; they have
learned grammar, logic, rhetoric, astrology, theology. We know by ex-
perience that they are skilled in those trades, they learn and know and
teach, and there is no art that they are not capable of learning and
practicing. (Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España
626–27)
Fellow Franciscan Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia) also refers to the

talent that the Indians had shown, in this case, for the “mechanical” art
of painting, in which they may be compared to celebrated Flemish artists,
some of whom had already established themselves in New Spain.21 In the
section entitled “De los oficios mecánicos que los indios han aprendido de
los españoles, y de los que ellos antes sabían” (Of the Trades that the Indians
Have Learned from the Spanish and Those They Knew Before), Motolinia
proclaims, in a rather unusual manner for a mendicant friar (perhaps he
was influenced by some treatise on alchemy), that “where there is gold and
silver, all that is good and perfect looks for the gold”:
With regard to mechanical trades, both those that Indians had before,
as well as the new ones they have learned from the Spanish, they have
much improved because, after the samples and images from Flanders
and Italy which the Spanish brought with them had arrived, they be-
came great painters. Many of those precious works have come to this
land because where there’s gold and silver, everything follows; in partic-
ular, Mexico’s painters, because that’s the destination of everything
good that comes to this land; and before they only knew how to paint a
flower or a bird or some trifle; and if they painted a man or a horse, they
were not of the appropriate size, now they make good images. (Moto-
linia, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España 172)
In his hyperbolic zeal to vindicate and glorify his own religious order,
Diégo Valadés specifies that, with regard to Indian painters, it was his
Franciscan brothers
who trained them in all trades which they came to know with such per-
fection as still may be seen (because they adorn with great beauty the
doors and the exteriors of the temples); therefore, there’s so much more
to admire in the adornment of a single temple in the Indies than in all
Spanish basilicas. (quoted in Reyes Valerio, Arte indocristiano 99)
The enormous talent that the Indians demonstrated in the re-creation

of certain images from the New Testament and their extraordinary skill to
subsequently capture them in diverse proportions did not escape notice in
the voluminous work of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. In his Apologética
historia sumaria (Apologetic Summary of the History), the Dominican friar
refers to an image from the Descent of Christ made by Indian artists as
evidence of their imaginative faculty, a definite sign of their “inherent and
undeniable humanity”:22
The perfection with which [the painters] represent the mysteries and
stories about our redemption is most marvelous, and I have particularly
noticed on several occasions that they have a special grace in the way
they represent the descent from the cross and the reception of the body
of our Savior, in the lap of Our Lady, what we call the fifth anguish.
Another thing for which they demonstrate great skill and care: if they
are asked to take a story from a large canvas or altarpiece where the
figures are big and to paint them and put them in a(nother) large one,
to see how they adjust them to the size of the new canvas or altarpiece
is a great and marvelous thing. All of this that has been said comes to
them and is a manifest sign of their excellent and wonderful virtue as
well as the power of their imagination. (de las Casas, Apologética histo-
ria sumaria, vol. 1, 323)
One of the most distinctive elements of the monasteries built in New

Spain until around the middle of the sixteenth century was the Indian, or
74 · Chapter 2
open, chapel, some of which also had corresponding processional cha-

pels.23 According to Manuel Toussaint, these small structures were directly
inspired by the Mexican teocalli, since their spatial organization is similar
to the layout of pre-Hispanic temple grounds.24 In New Spain’s monaster-
ies, as in pre- Columbian temples, Catholic rites were practiced outside
the building, in the massive courtyard, in order to evangelize the vast
number of souls that had to be saved during the early stages of the spiri-
tual conquest:25
Open chapels represent perhaps the only possible analogy between the
Christian temple and the Indian teocalli; in both cases, religion was
practiced in the open air; priests were the only ones to take up the roofed
space, while the faithful were placed in the great fenced courtyard, just
like they did in Indian temples. Additionally, they are the most original
type of religious architecture of the Colonial period, owing to their dif-
ference from the European buildings of the time, for example, Muslim
musallas.26 (Toussaint, Arte colonial de México 13)
Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta asserts the importance and purpose of this

local architectural design and at the same time describes the scope and ap-
parent uniformity of the religious structures erected during the first half-
century of New Spain’s existence:
In front of the church of every monastery in New Spain there is a huge

fenced courtyard, which was mainly built so that during feast days, when
the whole town gathers, they can hear mass and the preachers in the
same courtyard, because there is not enough space inside the body of
the Church, except for those whom their devotion brings them to hear
mass during weekdays. (Mendieta 418–19)
Although eventually almost every monastic order built and used open
chapels, the Franciscans boast of having come up with the idea of preach-
ing in the open air.27 This order also built the most elaborate and best-
preserved examples among the relatively few open chapels that survive
today; many were demolished during the seventeenth century, and others
during the twentieth. Toussaint mentions in par ticular the open chapel
at San José de los Naturales where many artistic and academic activities
were organized under the supervision of Fray Pedro de Gante. This archi-
tectural complex had “seven parallel naves, all of which were open at their
ends. The temple was so spacious that it was chosen as the site where the
imperial catafalque would be built during the funeral rites of Emperor

Charles V” (Toussaint, Arte 13). The chronicler of these funerary rites,
Doctor Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, provides the sole contemporary
description (with neither evangelistic nor propagandistic purposes) of
these innovative buildings. In one of the dialogues that comprises his work
entitled México en 1554 (Mexico in 1554), Cervantes de Salazar re- creates
how these structures aroused the curiosity of a peninsular Spaniard, referred
to simply as Alfaro, upon admiring the monastery of Santo Domingo:
“The monastery—he says—is very large and in front of the church there
is a huge square, surrounded by walls, and with chapels or oratories in the
corners, although I don’t quite understand what they are used for” (53).
His local guide and interlocutor, Zamora, replies that these “chapels or
oratories” have both a practical and a ritual function, made necessary by
the great number of faithful who come to church:
They have a very important [function], namely, that during feast days,
such as the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Death, Resurrection,
and Ascension, the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Her Nativ-
ity, the days of the Apostles and of Santo Domingo, since the cloister is
not big enough to hold so many worshipers, they and the monks come
out praying, preceded by the cross and in front of the images, and cir-
cling around they stop and pray at each chapel. (Cervantes de Salazar,
México en 1554 53)
Although McAndrew has compared the creation of the processional

chapel to the skyscraper of the twentieth century as “the most radical ar-
chitectural innovation in the Americas” (vii), in this chapter I consider its
importance only within the context of missionary theater and mural paint-
ing. The confluence of these two foundational artistic genres in New
Spain is to be discovered precisely within this architectural innovation,
specifically created by the Franciscans. Motolinia provides documentary
evidence that attests to the link between mural painting and processional
chapels, and he recounts with a wealth of detail how the images of the Tree
of Jesse, the Creation, and several others were painted on the walls of the
recently finished open chapel of the Franciscan monastery at Tlaxcala, of
which he was then prior:
By Christmas, they had finished the courtyard’s chapel, out of which

a most solemn work was created and they called it Bethlehem. Afterwards,
they painted the outside in fresco over the course of four days, and thus
76 · Chapter 2
the rains never washed the paint off; in an octagonal vault, they painted
the episodes of the first three days of the creation of the world, and in an-
other octagonal vault, those of the next three days; and in the other two
octagonal vaults, upon one they painted the Tree of Jesse, with the ge-
nealogy of the Mother of God, who was placed on high and is very
beautiful; on the other, was our Father Saint Francis; in another sec-
tion, the Church, the Holy Pope, cardinals, bishops, etc., and on the
other side, the emperor, kings, and knights. The Spaniards who have
seen the chapel say that it is one of the most gracious works of its kind in
Spain (sic). Its arches are very well carved; two choirs: one for the sing-
ers, another for the minstrels; all of this was done in six months, and
thus the people of Tlaxcala had a well adorned and conceived chapel
and churches. (Motolinia, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España
64– 65)
Although the aforementioned images disappeared long ago, this is one

of the few contemporary descriptions of a program of mural painting that
exists today.28 Besides its historical value, Motolinia’s remarks represent
a foundational example of the description of this variety of iconographic
representation, since the monastery at Tlaxcala is one of the oldest in
New Spain, dating to the first half of the sixteenth century. The curious
reference to “the works of the same style that can be found in Spain” is a
sign that perhaps there may have existed a prototype of the open chapel
in the Iberian Peninsula, something that no one has yet been able to
confirm.
Mural Painting in New Spain: A Singular

Artistic Expression
The twelve apostolic Franciscans who disembarked in Veracruz in 1524

arrived shortly after three distinguished friars of the same order who, sur-
prisingly, were not Spaniards but Flemish: Johan Dekkers (Juan de Tecto),
Johann Van de Auwera (Juan de Aora), and Pierre de Gan (Pedro de
Gante), who had arrived a year earlier, in 1523. Soon, these missionaries
would become essential instruments for the evangelization and accul-
turation of the inhabitants of the valley of Mexico. Around the middle
of the sixteenth century, Pedro de Gante founded the aforementioned
School of San José de los Naturales, where the most outstanding mem-
bers of the Indian nobility were taught to read and write not only in
Spanish but also in Greek and Latin. They also learned trades such as
painting and sculpture, as well as others meant to establish and explicate
the Christian faith. In order to achieve a better understanding of the In-
dians and upon the request of their head prelate, Fray Francisco Toral,
Bernardino de Sahagún, another Franciscan who had arrived shortly
after the Apostolic Twelve, inadvertently carried out one of the first eth-
nographic studies in the history of the New World.29 Through Sahagún’s
Indian informants and the composition of his voluminous Historia
general de las cosas de la Nueva España (1579), also known as the Códice
Florentino (Florentine Codex), a quasi-scientific description of the Nahua
world on the eve of the fall of Tenochtitlan has survived, along with
drawings of many of the arts and trades that were taught to the Indians,
including the concept of tlacuilotzin, that is, the art of fine painting
(figure 12).30
As was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, only during the
early years of the spiritual conquest of Mexico could the friars have had
access to a group of Indian experts who had studied in the calmecac, the
pre-Hispanic schools in which students were taught the Western equiva-
lent of the fine arts. These schools educated painters, sculptors, and archi-
tects who were accustomed to using their talents and knowledge to erect
Figure 12. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex (ca. 1576),

“Tlacuilo.” (Image reproduced from the Florentine Codex/
General History of the Things of New Spain. Edited by José Luis
Martínez [Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1982].)
78 · Chapter 2
and embellish the temples, palaces, and gardens of Tenochtitlan. Constan-

tino Reyes-Valerio, elaborating on the work begun by previous scholars,
including Donald Robertson and Manuel Toussaint, has demonstrated
that these individuals may have been employed (at least in the first stage of
what may be considered the evangelization of the imaginary) by the Fran-
ciscans to build, adorn, and maintain some of the first monasteries that
were constructed beginning in 1524, many of which were built on the foun-
dations of pre-Hispanic temples. In his monograph El pintor de conventos:
los murales del siglo XVI en la Nueva España (The Painter of Monasteries:
The Murals of Sixteenth-Century New Spain), Reyes-Valerio presents an at-
tractive hypothesis concerning the involvement of the calmecac-trained
tlacuilos during the first decades of New Spain’s evangelization and pro-
vides statistical evidence of the possible ages of these Mexican tlacuilos
during the first stage of evangelization.
In most of these buildings, mural painting constitutes an essential icon-
ographical element in the naves, sacristies, and vaults of churches, as well
as in the stairways, corridors, refectories, and cloisters of monasteries. In
many of New Spain’s monasteries, one may still discover the remains of
mural painting from this foundational period, and, in some cases, these
images have survived only because they were preserved over almost five
centuries beneath thick, consecutive layers of lime.31 Therefore, it may be
stated that, at least at the beginning of the spiritual conquest of Mexico,
there were expressions and examples of mural painting found in almost
every monastery in New Spain: from San Xavier del Bac, a Jesuit mission
located on the northern border of the Spanish Empire in the arid zone of
the Tohono O’odham, to the tropical jungles of Guatemala, El Salvador,
and Honduras.32 As I have pointed out, the iconographic basis of New
Spain’s mural painting, most of which was executed in black and white on
a burnished wall, is to be found mainly in the illustrated books brought
by the friars, particularly those works published in the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries in European publishing centers such as Antwerp and
Seville. On many occasions, the first page—or frontispiece—of these
texts, which include breviaries, confessionals, missals, Bibles, and other
religious publications, included an architectonically inspired engraving
that often represented the image of Jesus Christ below a Greco-Latin frieze,
the coat of arms of an ecclesiastical order or another religious motif (fig-
ure 6a, p. 22). John McAndrew supports this theory:
The surfaces [of monastery walls] were usually adorned with didactic
black and white paintings, in imitation of European models, usually
engravings from northern European countries, rather than Spanish

murals. Although undoubtedly there were then more visible frescos in
Spanish monasteries than the ones that may be seen today, they were
never too many, and the murals which have been discovered in approxi-
mately seventy-five Mexican monasteries, during the last fifty years,
make up the greatest corpus of sixteenth-century frescos anywhere in the
Spanish-speaking world. (The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century
Mexico 137)
McAndrew also establishes a significant parallel between these graphic

representations (or re-creations) and their pre-Hispanic predecessors, men-
tioning the impression that the latter had on the Spaniards’ imagination,
although he is uncertain regarding a direct pre- Columbian influence, at
least as far as the subject matter and technique are concerned, since, in his
opinion, these were purely European designs:
The Europeans were impressed by the richly painted walls of the Indian
temples and palaces, and the mural paintings of churches and monkish
buildings perhaps reflect this admiration. At first sight, owing to their
shiny surface, this technique may seem more Indian than European;
however, after a more careful examination, the contrary can be proved.
Pre- Conquest painting offers no near predecessors and the technique
may be frequently identified as Spanish: not as “true fresco”—which
was rare in Spain before Phillip II imported Italian artists for the deco-
ration of his Escorial—but a variant of the far more common dry fresco
in a locally-adapted recipe. [ . . . ] Although its simplification may lead
us to consider it as vaguely native, the anatomy of its figures and the
spatial relation with its environment surely had its origins in Euro-
pean traditions, just like its Christian subject matters. Its iconographic
models were probably portable importations: small pictures, paintings
(engravings) in books or religious engravings. (The Open- Air Churches
of Sixteenth- Century Mexico 137)
Although he does not seem to admire the aesthetic value of these mu-
ral programs, McAndrew recognizes their originality because, according
to him, they were based on an “imperfect” recollection, but they also in-
cluded some “Indian mannerisms”:33
Identified echoes and copies of ornaments found in books and also figu-
rative compositions in Flemish, Italian, French, and German printed
80 · Chapter 2
matter, even engravings by Dürer and Schongauer. Sporadically, an-

cient wooden plates were imported in order to be used again in local
presses. The friars had abundant supplies of popular religious printed
matter that they gave as gifts to worthy Indians. A box with 210 drawings
arrived [in Mexico] in 1572. There were many European models, and
only an insignificant account of the pre-Hispanic traditions of codex
and mural paintings. (The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mex-
ico 137–38)
Establishing the intimate relationship between mural painting and the

printed book is not a difficult task, at least not in the case of New Spain,
because, as has been discussed, explicit examples may be found both in
the Franciscan monastery at Calpan, as well as in the Augustinian “for-
tress monasteries” at Acolman, near Teotihuacan, and Actopan, in the
state of Hidalgo.
Who could have produced (or, rather, reproduced) these early pictorial
works? More often than not, they were the tlacuilos, many of whom had
been trained in monastic schools, as it was only well into the sixteenth
century when painters, carpenters, sculptors, and architects arrived from
the Old World en masse, and they were usually concentrated in the large
European colonial centers, such as Mexico City and Puebla. In his impor-
tant investigation, Constantino Reyes-Valerio provided statistical evidence
regarding the possible age of Indian artisans who could have been em-
ployed by the ruling class in Nahua society prior to the arrival of the
Spaniards. According to his calculations, during the first decades of colo-
nization, many of them could have participated, perhaps by force, in the
immense physical and artistic effort involved in the building of monaster-
ies, churches, and other sacred buildings in the valley of Mexico and its
surroundings.34
With regard to the possibility of direct Indian participation in the devel-
opment of mural painting in New Spain, this is no longer simply a hypoth-
esis, because we now know that the painter (tlacuilo), Juan Gersón, an
Indian baptized with the name of the famous medieval French theolo-
gian, was hired by the local town council to decorate the monastery at
Tecamachalco, Puebla, around the middle of the sixteenth century.35 Al-
though at first it may seem odd, his closest European colleagues were
northern European artists such as Hans Holbein: for example, a Spanish
edition of his Icone historiarum veteris testamenti, published in 1549, was
the iconographic model for two medallions adorning the vault in the
church at Tecamachalco; meanwhile, the great Dürer, illustrator of the
Wittenburg Bible, inspired other images (Camelo Arredondo et al., Juan

Gersón: Tlacuilo de Tecamachalco 24) (figures 13, 14). Although the subject
matters were literally lifted from the “bookish” background, the at-times
subtle contribution made by Indian artists to the artistic representation
of some of these religious subject matters should not be ignored; neither
can one overlook the fact that this par ticular work is dated with a curious
mixture of Nahuatl, Latin, and Spanish: MAIVS 1562. ANOS. IPAN
OMOCHIVIN [May 1562. In this place and time] (Camelo Arredondo
et al., Juan Gersón 14).
Like other cultural expressions that became extinct or were radically
altered after the European landfall (for example, theater, dance, and music),
painting also succumbed to its destiny but was subsequently reborn as
Figure 13. Tecamachalco, Puebla. Juan Gersón, an Indian artist whose paint-
ings on amatl (fig bark) paper were inspired by German artists such as Hans
Holbein, whose Spanish edition of Icones historiarum veteris testamenti, pub-
lished in 1549, provided the iconographic model for the medallion representing
“The City of God” that adorns the vault of the sotocoro in the Franciscan mon-
astery. Gersón was influenced by—and might even have studied under—the
itinerant Franciscan Andrés de Olmos, an expert in Nahuatl culture who was
active during the early decades of New Spain’s spiritual conquest. (Image taken
from the Internet.)
82 · Chapter 2
Figure 14. The monastery of San Francisco Tecamachalco, Puebla. “The City of
God,” painting by Juan Gersón (1562). (Photo by Michael Schuessler.)
Mexico’s foremost plastic expression, both in a cultural and in an artistic

sense. Images with pre- Columbian influences, frequently limited to the
marginalia of the pictorial program, may be found in vines, flowers, plants,
and other leitmotifs that adorn the portraits of saints, the Crucifixion, the
Tree of Jesse, and the Apocalypse, among other frequent subjects. In some
places, the Indian contribution to the creation of these works is far more
evident. For example, most of the early provincial monasteries were deco-
rated by peripatetic Indian tlacuilos, while, as has been pointed out, Euro-
pean immigrants tended to establish themselves in larger cities, such as
Puebla or Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and there completed and distributed their
works.
The most extraordinary example of this phenomenon (and one that
will be the subject of the next chapter) may be found in the church of San
Miguel Arcángel at Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. There, within a background
that abounds in plant motifs, flowers, and acanthus leaves, a battle be-
tween indigenous eagle and jaguar knights is represented, recalling, at
least as far as its subject matter is concerned, the mural cycle uncovered in
1974 in Cacaxtla, a pre-Hispanic site located in the state of Tlaxcala and
pertaining to the Olmeca-Xicalanca culture (mid-seventh to eighth cen-
tury AD). In Itzmiquilpan, the frieze’s narration provides a wealth of detail
that includes a centaur with human feet and Indian sandals (cactli), along-
side warriors from whose mouths sprout speech scrolls, the same symbols
that the tlacuilos had used to represent speech and song in pre-Hispanic
codices (figures 15, below, and 20, p. 106).
The monastery at Actopan, Hidalgo, is related to that of Itzmiquilpan,
for it was also designed by Fray Andrés de Mata, who is believed to have
studied art and architecture in Italy before traveling to Mexico (although
the requisite documentation is still missing). Nevertheless, Mata evidently
had a great talent for building and an exceptional artistic vision in a land
where few European architects had yet to venture. As evidence of the se-
vere lack of artists and architects among the members of the evangelizing
orders throughout the sixteenth century, John McAndrew points out that
although there are references to other friar architects during the first years
after the conquest, the documents identifying their creations are unknown:
Although we have scattered news about the few professional architects

who built a few buildings in sixteenth- century New Spain, we have
even less information about the friars who constructed far more build-
ings. We have more information about Fray Juan de Alameda, who
Figure 15. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. A figure known as

the “Warrior” that appears in the mural painting located in the nave of this
Augustinian monastery. (Photo by Silvia González de León and Antonio
Montes de Oca.)
84 · Chapter 2
might have been the most active of them. He arrived with Bishop-
Elect Zumárraga, in December 1528. [ . . . ] until more information
is discovered in some archive or other, the best option would be to
leave him as a ghost. (The Open- Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century
Mexico 334–39)
The life and work of Fray Andrés de Mata deserves a careful biographi-
cal study because he was a leading promoter of the plastic arts in his
region (in the form of mural painting), specifically in the valley of El
Mezquital, where examples may be found not only at Actopan but also at
Itzmiquilpan. The latter is an important monastery because, according to
Elena Estrada de Gerlero, the Augustinian chapter meeting was held there
in 1572. Indeed, this important synod may have led to the renovation of
the monastery and the execution of these extraordinary mural paintings.
This ecclesiastical gathering had been preceded by a major theological
conference held in the capital of New Spain in 1569 in which the re-
peated and violent raids carried out by the Chichimec Indians within the
northern frontier of the Christian territories, among other pressing issues,
were discussed. According to her investigations, this is the most logical the-
ory in order to justify a most unusual series of frescoes painted on the walls of
the Augustinian monastery at Itzmiquilpan, for although the representa-
tion of Indian garb and warfare was common in dances, it was a novelty in
painting (Estrada de Gerlero, “El friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan” 18).
These two monasteries share several important characteristics: both
were built in the valley of El Mezquital during the same period, and both
have similar architectural motifs, both interior and exterior: battlement
walls, an Arabic-style tower (alminar), and a pink stone façade, sculpted in
the late Plateresque style. Nevertheless, the subject matter of their respec-
tive mural cycles could not be more distinct. The images painted on the
walls, vault, and choir of the nave of Itzmiquilpan’s church include refer-
ences to biblical figures, Indian warriors, and recently invented hybrid
beasts taken from both European and Mesoamerican representational
traditions. However, the images found in the stairway and the walls of the
church at Actopan were copied directly from a history of the Augustinian
order published in Seville: the program includes the portraits of some of
the major personages of this evangelizing order, including its founder,
Saint Augustine of Hippo.
The pictorial, mythological, and religious syncretism such as that to be
witnessed at Itzmiquilpan not only took place with the incorporation and
subsequent recasting of two radically different ways of understanding and
representing religious matters, in this case, through an elaborate program

of mural painting. At the same time, it should be underscored that the
materials used to create these images were often appropriated from the
vast repertoire of indigenous colors and dyes made from plants, minerals,
and even native insects (such as cochineal). Certain colors, for example,
turquoise green, recall the color of the quetzal’s feathers, a bird that the
Nahuas held in high esteem and valued immensely both for their sym-
bolic and economic value and because the hue of its long plumes was that
of precious jade. Other colors, such as red and black, evoke Quetzalcoatl
who, in his representations as a culture deity, was the patron of the tlacui-
los, or scribes, most of whom belonged to the dominant classes (pipiltin).
From a very early age, they had received a specialized education in schools
(calmecac) where they were taught the art of memory, painting, and “writ-
ing”: in Nahuatl, in tlilli tlapalli (the black and the red), colors associated
with Quetzalcoatl that symbolized wisdom or knowledge. The calme-
cac’s students were also taught the mysteries of time (through the civic and
religious calendar) and those of the heavens (through religion and astron-
omy). In fact, a codex of Indo-Hispanic execution may have served as an
important iconographic element in the mural program at Itzmiquilpan and
is reflected on both sides of the nave, as a repeated (yet an inverted) image.
Nevertheless, this concerns only its general design, as the program repre-
sents different subject matters such as “The Fight between Indian Knights
and Fantastic Beings” and “The Defeat of Cihuateteo.” According to some
scholars, these indigenous knights, animals, dragons, and centaurs wage a
battle between good and evil, known as “psychomachia,” which for those
missionaries and their native flock was a daily concern.36
What may be considered “thematic syncretism” is perhaps the most
striking feature of these mural paintings, because the recasting of classic
figures from Greek and Roman cultures is combined with the gods, ani-
mals, and magical beings that pertain to Nahua polytheistic religion. Un-
derstandably, there are also images of the archangel Michael, Itzmiquilpan’s
patron saint, slaying a scaled dragon, as well as an image of San Gabriel.
However, upon entering the sacristy, one may observe a radically different
style in the images executed on the walls of this space. There, in what
Kubler refers to as the monastery’s intimate space, which was occupied only
by friars and their acolytes, and to which laymen (Indians) seldom had ac-
cess, is to be found the precinct’s “European sector,” this owing to its ca-
nonical representations of saints and martyrs of the Catholic tradition
(figure 16). Nevertheless, Mass is officiated in the nave’s public space, and
this is where these extraordinary hybrid images are found, surely because
86 · Chapter 2
Figure 16. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. Sacristy (detail). (Photo
by Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
they were designed for (and by) the recently acculturated Otomí Indians
who inhabited the town and comprised the entire flock of neophytes.
As I have argued throughout this book, from the beginning of New
Spain’s evangelization, theater and mural painting were used for conver-
sion; in both cases, their aim was not only to infuse Catholic faith through
the eyes (considered windows of the soul), but, as has already been demon-
strated to use the long-standing dramatic and iconographic traditions that
had been developed by the pre- Columbian world and employed in a very
similar manner. The general lack of European artisans, painters, archi-
tects, and other experts in New Spain’s capital during the first years of the
colonial period (a phenomenon that was more significant in its provinces)
gave rise to the urgent need to employ a vast group of masons, artisans,
and painters from the recently conquered Indian world.37
As has been pointed out, a lack of verbal communication was undoubt-

edly the main challenge faced during the catechesis of tens of thousands
of Native Americans. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesu-
its faced an enormous diversity of languages and dialects spoken in the
regions where they carried out their evangelistic work: in Oaxaca, Mix-
tec, and Zapotec; in the valley of Mexico, Nahuatl; in Hidalgo, Otomí;
and in Michoacán, Purépecha. This immediately gave rise to the need
for dictionaries, confessionals, and other religious texts to help carry out
this conversion en masse. It is no surprise then that the first works pub-
lished in New Spain (keeping in mind that the printing press arrived in
1539) were of that nature, written by respected friar- chroniclers and histo-
rians such as Zumárraga, Molina, Motolinia, and Sahagún. In the first
part of this chapter, I discussed Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana,
published in Perugia, which includes a series of engravings that provide
scholars of early New Spain with a more detailed vision of the evangelis-
tic methods practiced by local friars. The first of these novel doctrinal
systems was, of course, the exemplum, and in this vein there are accounts
of a Franciscan who walked over hot coals in order to graphically illus-
trate the horrors of hell. As if that were not enough, in the same “per for-
mance,” the friar sacrificed several domestic animals, throwing them into
an improvised oven, in order to illustrate the sentence that God had de-
creed for those pagans who had not accepted and followed the precepts
of the new faith. There followed numerous versions of the so- called Tes-
terian codex, illustrated with images that immediately recall the way in
which pre- Columbian figures were arranged on the codex painted on
amatl.
A more complex theatrical art was born from the exemplum devised by
Fray Toribio de la Caldera; its roots could be found both in the Indian
tradition, discussed at length in the first chapter, and in those works (reli-
gious plays, miracles, and the lives of saints) that had already been per-
formed in the major religious centers of medieval Europe. However, it was
within the context of this interaction with a highly developed New World,
one that had celebrated its ancient gods with an undeniable sense of
drama, that this, the first truly Mexican artistic and ideological expression,
appeared on the recently discovered American continent. The friars re-
cruited the local Indians to participate in the building of monasteries and,
therefore, a certain Indian presence was to become evident in local archi-
tecture, even more so when one takes into consideration that in some re-
gions, for example, in Cholula, Tlaxcala, or Izamal, the latter located in
the distant Yucatan Peninsula, the Catholic structure was built directly on
88 · Chapter 2
top of the same stones that had originally been used to construct the origi-
nal pyramid.
Evidently the interior decoration, for example, mural painting, altar-
pieces, and other ecclesiastical decorative elements typical of the mid-
sixteenth century, could only be finished once the monastery had been
roofed. Therefore, the so-called Testerian codex and other pictorial can-
vases gradually fell into disuse after the didactic and narrative images of
mural paintings were in place, despite the fact that the latter had their ori-
gin in the primitive canvases and codices. These same evangelical devices,
an essential element for the reinforcement of catechesis, remained in force
in the small towns visited by the friars, even after the priory had been fin-
ished.38 Although the canvases and codices were still used in those regions
where the friars had not yet established their presence, such as was the
case in the Chichimec region, located in the arid northern expanse of
what is now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, they
gradually ceded in favor of more lasting expressions in cultural centers
such as Mexico and Tlaxcala, owing both to the techniques and materials
that were used, such as stone carving and paint applied with glue. This
medium, unlike theater, which seems to have been first the work of Fran-
ciscans, and subsequently of Dominicans and Jesuits, was practiced and
developed by all of New Spain’s monastic orders in a parallel fashion. Ex-
amples of mural programs are still to be found, particularly in Augustinian
monasteries, which were more indulgent in this practice, at Itzmiquilpan,
Actopan, Epazoyucan, Acolman, and Malinalco, among others. There are
also specific examples in the Dominican temple of Santo Domingo, in the
city of Oaxaca. At Tepotzotlán, Estado de México, the Jesuits also em-
ployed this medium, although in a more ornamental manner, chiefly be-
cause their order arrived when the immense evangelistic task faced by the
first three orders had almost come to an end. Moreover, the Jesuit order
belonged to the “secular clergy,” and their members were almost always
located in large criollo metropolises such as Puebla and Mexico City, far
away from rural settlements, which were those preferred by Franciscans,
Augustinians, and other members of the “regular clergy.”
Mural painting constitutes the most ancient and original artistic me-
dium in New Spain. From its roots in ancient petroglyphs found in caves
throughout Mesoamerica, to the architectural adornment incorporated
into pyramids, palaces, and other public buildings in large pre-Hispanic
centers such as Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan, Bonampak, and Cacaxtla, the
survival and unyielding persistence of this native artistic medium may be
clearly perceived. In the twentieth century, muralists who adorned the vast
interiors of public buildings with didactic and revolutionary images, such

as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, among
others, continued this ancient tradition. New Spain’s theater also has a
long, or at least continuous, presence in Middle American cultures, be-
cause although it may be stated that ethnodramatic performances had
their origins in the genesis of ancient cultures such as those of the Olmec
and Teotihuacano, they also played an essential role in the pagan rites of
Nahua culture, until radically transformed at the hands of Spanish con-
quistadors and missionaries.
Chapter Three
Iconography and Evangelization
New World Iconology
The relatively few surviving examples of the thousands of square meters

of mural painting that once covered the interior walls of monasteries,
churches, and processional chapels of New Spain, built at the request
of the three principal evangelistic orders, constitute an iconographical
representation that provides a unique opportunity to carry out an in-
depth study of the sociohistorical phenomenon known as “syncretism,”
which resulted in the aesthetic and ideological product baptized as
“Indo- Christian art.”1
Along with missionary theater, this genre was one of the first syncretic
products of the contact between two cultures that, prior to the conquest,
were entirely unaware of each other. Understandably, mural painting made
its first appearance shortly after the construction of the monasteries had been
completed. As has been seen, owing to its historical context, this medium
was the direct recipient of an assorted corpus of iconographic models from
both European and pre-Hispanic pictorial traditions. However, as a direct
consequence of the territorial, political, religious, and cultural domination
of the new territories, European iconography was quickly imposed over
pre- Columbian models. In the case of the conquered civilization, a limited
quantity of pre-Hispanic iconographic elements survived, simply because
the Indians, or tlacuilos, were the first to undertake this enormous artistic
task, under the supervision and guidance of the recently disembarked friars.2
Moreover, some of these early friars consciously preserved and exploited
90
Iconography and Evangelization · 91
certain representative elements born of pre- Columbian religious concep-

tions for reasons more pragmatic than Christian.3 Consequently, the artistic
output of these circumstances may be more thoroughly interpreted with a
phrase coined by French historian Serge Gruzinski: “the colonization of
the imaginary.” 4
In order to achieve a better understanding of the origin and develop-
ment of this nascent artistic genre, I have used a theoretical model in-
spired by the “iconological analysis” developed by German art historian
Erwin Panofsky in the middle of the twentieth century. While this model
allows for the extrapolation of a set of elements possessing certain sym-
bolic value, in order to carry out an interpretation of said elements one
must surpass the limited observations of a purely historical approach.
Through the careful deployment of an iconological examination, a pro-
found hermeneutic analysis may be achieved that both amplifies and clari-
fies the findings provided by the often limited observations arising from
historical interpretation. One might thus more systematically explain the
presence and significance of mural painting in the origins of the art of
New Spain. This is due to the fact that its most direct sources are closely
associated with the Renaissance tradition of the illustrated book and its
American equivalent: the pictographic codex.5
This sort of analysis also proves useful in order to reconstruct, to the
extent possible, the representational canons of an incipient mestizo culture
through the analysis of how, by way of the image, this culture re-created,
preserved, and modified the manner in which it interpreted its immediate
reality: in this case, a world that suddenly saw its foundations deeply trans-
formed with the European landfall that began in 1492. As is the case
with any methodology, this mode of analysis should be deployed with
care, since in the case of New Spain’s mestizo art (or any other syncretic
product) one not only confronts the representative codes belonging to an
previously-established symbolic lexicon but the artistic representations of
two cultural entities that had evolved independently throughout their re-
spective histories. In the case of New Spain’s mural painting, these diver-
gent codes were abruptly fused together to create a new artistic discourse,
an aesthetic expression sui generis, no longer solely European nor exclu-
sively Indian. With the aid of this interpretative tool, it may established
how the merging of the artistic expressions belonging to two initially op-
posing cultures led to the creation of a symbolic foundational language
that is hybrid, multifaceted, harmonious, and, at the same time, unique.
The first step in an iconological analysis is that of pre-iconographic
description, an initial stage based almost entirely on historical research.
92 · Chapter 3
Its purpose is to ascertain how a culture’s foundational objects, events,

and ideas were transcribed into an artistic vernacular during a given his-
torical period: it is, in other words, “the history of style.” Essentially, this
first level of interpretation includes that of certain artistic motifs belong-
ing to the conventions of each culture’s particular aesthetic tradition. For
example, in both European and Mesoamerican art, this phase would en-
compass the manner in which a figure is represented within the pictorial
plane in order to illustrate its relationship with other figurative elements.
In the case of New Spain’s mural painting, one possible objective of this
phase might include an analysis of the differences between the respective
culture’s spatial expressions, and subsequently identify the development of
a new representational convention brought about by the contact between
both cultures. Consequently this approach could detect the resulting sym-
biosis between two dissimilar styles, since the Renaissance perspective, as
developed by such European painters as Albrecht Dürer and Piero della
Francesca, was not employed by pre-Hispanic artists.6 However, at the
same time, indigenous artists employed their own devices to represent dis-
tance and proportion; their technique resulted in another kind of perspec-
tive, one that might not achieve the same quality of illusion to the Western
eye but is significant nevertheless.
Iconographic analysis, the second step in the examination of images
included in New Spain’s mural painting programs, requires a certain level
of training from the “reader” who contemplates this artistic representation.
In this phase, viewers must be aware of the cultural factors that combined to
produce the aesthetic expression pertaining to the society that gave rise to
this phenomenon and thus improve their capacity to decode its symbolic
message. The ideal reader must therefore possess a broad thematic and con-
ceptual lexicon to enable the identification and interpretation of mythologi-
cal, historical, and sacred references to the (written or oral) cultural tradition,
and its consequent artistic interpretation in order to grasp the correct mean-
ing of the image on this plane. More significantly, the reader must know
how to pin down the fundamental structure underlying any iconographic
representation to identify the images and assimilate their narrative-symbolic
meaning. Panofsky refers to this as the “filter of condensation,” the filter allud-
ing to the core elements necessary to re-create and comprehend the image
under scrutiny. Therefore, the reader has the task of recuperating those ele-
ments that might have been omitted at the moment of its conception, in an
effort that closely resembles the interpretation of a palimpsest. This is be-
cause the observer frequently has to interpret elements found deep within
this representational tradition to discover multiple levels of meaning.
In the case of New Spain’s mural painting, this underlying icono-

graphic palimpsest is comprised of an original European structure, both
artistic and textual, and the graphic and symbolic reproduction and rein-
terpretation of that structure by generally anonymous Mexican tlacuilos.
Already equipped with an established symbolic value and frequently the
basis of such works, these images make up a syncretic framework whose
hybrid message is the observer’s responsibility to interpret. Only the most
essential information has been incorporated into the image: that “tex-
tual” or “mythopoetic” base remains hidden behind the visible repre-
sentation painted on walls and contains the multiple meanings that
subsequently facilitate its correct interpretation.7 On the interpretive plane
of exegesis, one may encounter the deployment of a textual foundation,
for example, in the moral content that the image’s didactic message con-
tains. However, one may also use this “filter” to specify a reading; this
kind of programmatic or syntactical painting may be “read” in the thou-
sands of square meters of mural paintings that were subsequently used for
evangelization. According to the observations of such diverse chroniclers
as Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia),
such programs were an important element found in most of New Spain’s
religious buildings.
The combination of these two analytical processes—(“iconological
synthesis”) united with what Panofsky describes as sensitivity or intuition
concerning the essential trends of the human mind—enables one to un-
derstand how all cultures, in a universally accepted manner, re-create
their understanding of the world through iconography. This last phase is
not limited to the interpretation of a given culture’s tendencies during a
specific historical period; rather, it puts forward a universal theory of sym-
bolic representation per se. As such, this phase is an attempt to delve into
the deepest functions of the human psyche.8
As may be noticed, this tripartite construction bears an affinity with
certain schools of historical linguistics in its attempt to recover the univer-
sal language present in any artistic expression. This is initially carried out
through a morphological (pre-iconographic), semantic (iconographic), and
generative (iconological) analysis, while the implications of this theory also
reveal a clear “generative” process. This process may be appreciated in the
development of an iconographic idiom, which may be isolated to subject it
to a more precise analysis, a study that might be considered the philology
(or archaeology) of the image. In this par ticular context, the meaning of
Horace’s celebrated dictum (ut pictura poesis)9 acquires a renewed value
since it proposes a relationship that is both intimate and universal and is
94 · Chapter 3
shared by both artistic expressions (pictorial and discursive). In other

words, it is a relation suggesting that throughout human experience a
communicative parallel exists, one that is not limited to a particular cul-
ture of a certain epoch or even to a single artistic genre.
The tripartite (pre-iconographic, iconographic, iconological) rela-
tionship I have described is particularly suited to the analysis of mural
painting as it developed in New Spain, in which one also discovers a
three- dimensional relationship: the prevailing European structure, the
(now repressed) pre- Columbian artistic tradition, and the synthesis of the
two. Given its obvious theoretical limitations, this relationship is clearly
only a starting point for the iconological study of New Spain’s mural
painting cycles. However, it proposes an appropriate and useful heuristic
that may be used to promote the in- depth study of a phenomenon that
scholars of colonial Mexican artistic and literary cultures should find
most engaging.
This process leads to an analysis that admits the incorporation of results
stemming from several disciplines; in turn, it allows for the confrontation
of some of the most pressing issues vis-à-vis the study of colonial painting
in Mexico, particularly its intimate relationship to both textual or oral
discourse. Such matters are related both to the technical and aesthetical-
ideological contribution of various (anonymous) groups of Indian artisans
who had been organized and trained by judicious friars to carry out an
enormous iconographical task, additionally charged with the need to pre-
serve and incorporate many images still imbued with pre-Hispanic sym-
bolic value. Also included in this scheme are the customary subjects of
ecclesiastical painting, as well as other artistic genres such as sculpture
and altarpieces.
In light of the foregoing, it may be said that indigenous influences are
not limited to the survival of a few decorative fragments from a destroyed
culture, stripped of their original iconographic value: on the contrary,
through their combination, they make up a symbolic lexicon that, based
on a European formal structure, brings about a new artistic consciousness
to represent and interpret both European and Indian worlds, but particu-
larly the latter; the foundations of indigenous iconography had been radi-
cally altered as a result of the conquest and subsequent colonization of the
Americas.10 Accordingly, it should be emphasized that in sixteenth-century
religious painting, syncretism was not always a casual decorative phenom-
enon; its presence may be discovered in the very origin of these pictorial
programs, in the way pigments were created and applied, and in represen-
tational techniques. With regard to the symbolic value attached to these
images, they reveal a persistent echo of the pre-Hispanic ideological world

emanating from a structurally European (con)text. This syncretic phe-
nomenon encompasses issues related to the significance of the plastic
arts (particularly mural painting), their invaluable role in the colonization
of New Spain, and the subsequent use of this medium by all evangelistic
orders in New Spain.
This artistic expression constitutes a phenomenon that may be com-
pared to that of a syntagmatic construction, that is, a group of linguistic
elements that function as a unit within an elocution in which a strong Euro-
pean influence gives order to a series of totally new elements that had al-
ready existed within the pre-Hispanic representative tradition, and which
are later to be discovered within a hybrid mestizo (i.e., syncretic) structure.
This syntagma allows for the development of such iconographic expres-
sions within the evangelistic environment of colonial Mexico, one initially
defined by the Reconquest (711–1492) and later by the Spanish Counter-
Reformation and its lasting influence on the Iberian psyche.11 Its conse-
quent use as a didactic-religious tool by the recently arrived friars lends a
substantial textual and even mythopoetic value to the mural painting de-
veloped during this period, since it recasts two traditions (discourses) that
would later give birth to a new artistic sensibility, one that will be consid-
ered in the following section as it appears on the walls of the Augustinian
church at Itzmiquilpan, founded around the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury in what is now the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. At this point, I take into
consideration only a few of the many implications of these circum-
stances in the development of a pioneering regional art that, at the same
time, documents and illustrates the first stage of the ideological and
plastic transformation of the Indian world—indeed, the genesis of an
Indo- Christian culture. To highlight a definite association between image
and text, I consider the intimate relationship this mural cycle shares with
at least one play performed in Mexico and mentioned by both Bernal
Díaz del Castillo and Bartolomé de las Casas in their respective works.
The staging of this play was at least partially the result of the strained
relationship between the sedentary Indians of the valley of Mexico and
the fearsome Chichimecs—or Mecos—whose members included several
groups of nomadic Indians that carried out frequent and violent raids into
the regions located to the north of the great pre-Hispanic cities (now trans-
formed into colonial centers of the Spanish empire), such as Tlaxcala,
Tenochtitlan, and Texcoco. This protracted battle between the Spanish
colonists and their Indian allies against the nomads collectively known
as Chichimec was documented by several chroniclers of the period,
96 · Chapter 3
particularly Gonzalo de las Casas, in his little-known Guerra de los chi-

chimecas (War of the Chichimecs), a chronicle written in the mid-
sixteenth century and whose main objective was to justify the Aristotelian
bello giusto in these isolated regions of New Spain where fabulous amounts
of silver and other precious metals had at that time recently been
discovered.
The Augustinian Monastery at San

Miguel Itzmiquilpan
The monastic complex located at Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo, dedicated to the

Archangel San Miguel, was founded between 1548 and 1550 by the afore-
mentioned friar-architect Andrés de Mata. The Augustinian missionaries,
who had been in New Spain since 1533, made their appearance in the
troubled region that marked the limit between the Nahua world and the
Chichimec frontier; with the intention to convert the native Otomi people
in the arid region now known as the valley of El Mezquital.12 The area was
originally known as Zecteccani, an Otomi toponym that signifies “place of
purslane.” Even after it was conquered by the Mexicas, the zone retained
its etymology, although its name was translated to “Itzmiquilpan,” Nahuatl
for “the place with an abundance of edible herbs that resemble an obsidian
knife,” that is, the purslane leaf (Nye, “The Talking Murals of Ixmiquil-
pan” 28). After the conquest, Itzmiquilpan became part of an encomienda;
its last governor, Gil González de Ávila, was executed in 1556, along with
his brother, Alonso, both accused of treason for their involvement in the
mutiny organized by Hernán Cortés’ legitimate son, Martín.13
The monastery’s design is simple and typical of New Spain’s architec-
ture of the period: a Plateresque façade, with Castile’s coat of arms and the
Augustinian emblem (a heart pierced by three arrows), is carved in pink
stone over the main entrance (figure 17). A tower with crenellations that
evoke the minarets of Islamic architecture provides the vertical axis that
runs perpendicularly to the nave, and the whole complex is delimited by a
wall so low that its only purpose seems to have been to outline the monas-
tic precinct; it would be useless as a fortification.
Andrés de Mata was an empirical architect who also designed and built
the nearby monastery at Actopan, belonging to the same order (see chap-
ter 4). As will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter, the com-
position of both monasteries’ artistic programs was heavily influenced by
Italian ornamentation; this is most evident in the grottesco images that pro-
Figure 17. Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. Façade of the church of San

Miguel Arcángel. (Photo by Michael Schuessler.)
vide the decorative background for the mural paintings of Actopan and—
in formal and thematic terms—inspired the mural paintings of the monastery
at Itzmiquilpan. It is not surprising to discover canonical representations
of the most outstanding members of the Augustinian order in the paint-
ings on the walls of the main staircase of Actopan’s monastery, along with
other didactic and historical images clearly inspired by European models.14
As Santiago Sebastián has demonstrated, these images were most likely
copied from the great variety of engravings included in the books brought
to the New World by the friars or acquired in New Spain’s capital, whether
98 · Chapter 3
imported from Europe or printed in Mexico beginning in 1539. Evidently

these “bookish” sources were interchanged between these and other mon-
asteries of the same order. Furthermore, Elena Estrada de Gerlero points
out the existence of a clearly regional style developed by the itinerant
tlacuilos who had evidently been informed by these graphic materials put
into circulation by the friars. This phenomenon may be perceived in the
still-extant mural paintings of some Augustinian convents, most of them lo-
cated in what is now the state of Hidalgo. According to Estrada de Gerlero:
Along with [Actopan and Itzmiquilpan], Meztitlán, Atotonilco el Grande,

Epazoyucan, Tezontepec, and Acolman contain a very important series
of examples of mural painting. Although there are fundamental differ-
ences between each monastery’s pictorial programs, the painters evi-
dently moved from one establishment to another in order to execute
different phases of their respective programs: this phenomenon may be
appreciated in the repetition of tracings for the vault’s pictorial designs,
in some grottescos, and in surviving pre-Hispanic elements. (“El friso
monumental de Itzmiquilpan” 9)
However, Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings constitute a fascinating depar-

ture from the iconographic and ideological canons of Catholic doctrine,
particularly those originating in the Council of Trent (1545–1563), during
which [bishops] were to ensure that:
by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption, portrayed

by paintings or other representations, the people are instructed, and
confirmed in (the habit of) remembering, and continually revolving in
mind the articles of faith; as also that great profit is derived from all sa-
cred images, not only because the people are thereby admonished of
the benefits and gifts bestowed upon them by Christ, but also because
the miracles which God has performed by means of the saints, and their
salutary examples, are set before the eyes of the faithful; that so they
may give God thanks for those things; may order their own lives and
manners in imitation of the saints; and may be excited to adore and love
God, and to cultivate piety. But if any one shall teach, or entertain senti-
ments, contrary to these decrees; let him be anathema.15
At first glance, these mural paintings do not in any way obey the severe
limitations of this edict; it is only through a careful analysis such as the
one provided by an iconological reading that the composition’s historical
and ideological content becomes evident. Despite the fact that several ex-
perts, in particular, the art historian Emily Edwards, have asserted that
“there is no reference to the new religion or celestial beings” (Edwards,
Painted Walls of Mexico 108), in the mural program at Itzmiquilpan, the
references do exist, but they are hidden behind an extraordinary synthesis
of the iconographic depiction of several principles of Catholic dogma, In-
dian mythology, and a recent historical and political event.16 In fact, these
historical and semantic sources stemmed from a representational system
that both cultures understood and exploited (mural painting) and which,
in this case, resulted from a Mexican scribe’s pictorial interpretation. Re-
garding this matter, Constantino Reyes Valerio reminds us:
Without the willing or forced cooperation of the natives, the friars

would have faced greater difficulties spreading the Christian faith than
they did. The consequences of one of the aspects of such effort were
particularly important for both friars and Indians: without the interven-
tion of both groups, these works would not have been carried out in the
same way that we know today because monastic painting was the result
of the efforts of men who were set apart by their ideas: friars and Indi-
ans. (El pintor de conventos 9)
A paragraph copied from the Memorias de fray Andrés de Mata (Memo-

ries of Fray Andrés de Mata), dated February 15, 1571, a year after violent
Chichimec raids in the region, reveals several aspects of daily life in
Itzmiquilpan’s monastery during the period immediately following the
completion of the mural paintings in question. In archaic Spanish and
employing the Renaissance rhetoric of false modesty, the prior explains:
There are four monks in the monastery at Itzimquilpa[n] who attend

to and indoctrinate natives. I am the prior, and although I am the one of
least merit, I have learned the Otomi and Mexican language and with
that knowledge I help the natives, particularly the Otomi who are all
the natives who live in the region; I have in my company a monk called
Fray Joan de la Madalena, an elderly brother, and a friar of quality; he
hears confessions and preaches in the Mexican language. The other is
named Friar Francisco de Cantos, theologian and preacher and confes-
sor, who hears confessions and preaches in the Otomi and Mexican lan-
guages; the other (fourth) monk is Friar Joan de Astorga; he cannot say
mass. (quoted in Carrillo y Gariel, Técnica de la pintura de la Nueva
España 8)
100 · Chapter 3
The fact that most of the friars who founded the monastery at Itzmiquil-
pan spoke and preached in the local (Otomi) language, as well as in Na-
huatl, proves not only that they maintained an essential communicative
advantage but that they also possessed some knowledge, although not
necessarily profound, of the Otomi people, their culture, their history, and
their suffering at the hands of the Chichimec invaders from the North,
this in addition to numerous abuses that the Spaniards had already com-
mitted in the region.
Along with historians and ethnographers from the colonial period—
such as “the spiritual doctor,” Fray Bernardino de Sahagún—we might
consider that the most efficient way to stamp out the Indian’s pagan beliefs
was through the methodical study and knowledge of their pagan lifestyle.
In such a manner, similarities to Catholicism could be emphasized, while,
at the same time, the ancient pagan traditions could be efficiently extin-
guished through a “Christian rhetoric” developed to put an end to the per-
sistence of the natives’ “diabolical” habits.17 Since at that time the Otomi
language (unlike Nahuatl) had not been adapted to the Latin alphabet,
the friars surely spent many hours with their native charges in order to learn
their language and in that way instill in them the essential elements of
Catholic faith: baptism, matrimony, confession, communion, and so on.18
In the same way, they contributed to the design and creation of Itzmiquil-
pan’s extraordinary mural paintings, here by providing the tlacuilos with
a thematic composition that would undermine the original (Indian) mean-
ing of the images and subjecting them to a dogmatic, allegorical, and
historical reinterpretation through a dominating syncretic endeavor. This
gesture exemplifies another facet of Robert Ricard’s “spiritual conquest” of
Mexico and Serge Gruzinski’s “colonization of the imaginary.” In this case,
the transmission of conquest and colonization is carried out through a
mural painting program in which traditional symbolic representations are
presented as a kind of a palimpsest that might display the ideology of a
dominant civilization through a representative language immediately in-
telligible to the conquered population.
A methodical analysis of these mural paintings reveals that, by means
of a visual metaphor, Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial program becomes a precise
and detailed text documenting the clerical interpretation of a recent
historical event—the Spanish conquest of the region and its subsequent
political repercussions—as carried out by a group of Indian artists under
the supervision of a European ecclesiastic (or ecclesiastics) with a pro-
found understanding of both cultures’ symbolic languages.19 In the case
of Itzmiquilpan’s mural cycle, the images allegorize a historical event that
inhabitants of the region experienced and that was possibly retransmitted

orally or even through ritual dance. The Augustinians reinterpreted this
original depiction through an iconographic vernacular that, due to its
syncretic qualities, proved to be a better way of transmitting its dogmatic
message to their Otomi neophytes. As such, Itzmiquilpan’s mural cycle is
an example of a unique Indo- Christian artistic representation created in
New Spain and inspired by what would appear to be a unique discursive
phenomenon.
The images in question cover both walls of the nave, the sotocoro,
vault, and a section of the church’s apse, and they constitute a decorative
frieze reminiscent of the configuration of pre-Hispanic mural paintings,
like those discovered in Teotihuacan, Bonampak, and, more recently,
Cacaxtla.20 The historical-religious theme to be found in Itzmiquilpan’s
mural paintings also suggests a codex painted on amatl paper, tradition-
ally executed by Indian tlacuilos. The tlacuilos were masters of the black
and the red (in Nahuatl, in tlilli tlapalli), the Nahuatl concept of wisdom
and knowledge associated with some of Quetzalcoatl’s most important
attributes. In this sense, Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel found outstanding
similarities between Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial program and some surviv-
ing Indo-Hispanic illustrated manuscripts, such as the Códice de Tla-
telolco (Tlatelolco Codex) (figure 18). Elena Estrada de Gerlero has also
pointed this out in her influential monograph on Itzmiquilpan’s mural
paintings:
Besides European engravings, the codices themselves were a source of

inspiration; and the codex painters might have sometimes been mural
painters. [ . . . The murals] share solutions employed in codices such as
the Tira de Tlaxcala [Tlaxcala Strip], the Códice Tlatelolco [Tlatelolco
Codex], the Códice de Tlaxcala [Tlaxcala Codex], the Códice Cuetlaxco-
apan [Cuetlaxcoapan Codex], the Códice Kingsborough [Kingsborough
Codex], the Códice Florentino [Florentine Codex], or even Durán’s Atlas,
the Códice Tovar [Tovar Codex], and the Códice Ramírez. [Ramírez Co-
dex] (“El friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan” 17)
According to George Kubler’s terminology, Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial pro-

gram is located within the “public sector” of the architectural complex,
a space where parishioners would have direct and constant access to the
images, and therefore to their didactic-moral message.21 Such a division
may be immediately perceived upon observing the mural paintings in
the “private sector” (the sacristy and the monastery, almost exclusively
102 · Chapter 3
Figure 18. Detail of the Tlatelolco Codex, painted in Santiago Tlate-

lolco in 1562. The document is divided into nine sections, some
longer than others (according to how many years they cover), from
1542 to 1560. In this image, one may observe Indian military dress
that closely resembles the garments worn by the warriors represented
in some scenes of the mural paintings at Itzmiquilpan’s Augustinian
monastery. It should also be observed that the Indian sits on a Span-
ish folding chair, a European symbol of authority since Greco-
Roman times. (Photo taken from the Internet.)
inhabited by the friars, except on special occasions), which are both the-
matically and structurally European. As shall be seen in the following
chapter, the images contained within these private spaces of the monas-
tery recall those to be found on the walls of Actopan’s staircase and sacristy,
both highly restricted areas used almost exclusively by the friars22 (figure 16,
p. 86).
The mural paintings in the nave of Itzmiquilpan’s church are approxi-
mately two meters high, and the paintings continue almost without inter-
ruption to cover every wall. Indeed those places where the iconographical
discourse is suddenly interrupted are possibly the result of errors commit-
ted during its restoration, which took place in the 1960s, a situation that
may clearly be perceived upon inspecting the mural painting program in
situ. Just about all of Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings were at least partially
covered with a thick coat of lime as a result of other modifications, while
the original murals were substituted with a series of nineteenth-century oil
paintings representing the life of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ. The
mural cycle might have also been whitewashed, along with those in Actopan’s
open chapel, following the Third Mexican Council (1585), which, inspired
by the Council of Trent (1548), prohibited the representation of pagan
scenes and nude figures, among other “obscene” imagery. However, this
pictorial program might have been whitewashed many years afterward,
during the Enlightenment, owing to the neoclassical artistic and archi-
tectural style that flourished in Spain during the reign of Charles III.
Neoclassicism was an enemy of the grottesco, a style rescued in Europe at
the end of the fifteenth century from the ruins of Nero’s Domus Aurea.
Only through a chemical analysis of the material with which these mu-
rals were covered might one determine the date when the mural cycle
was concealed. It should be pointed out that some of the original mural
paintings, especially those found in the upper section of the nave, near the
apse, were not whitewashed and have remained visible for more than four
hundred years. It was almost by accident that the original mural paintings
were discovered in 1960 by a group of workers who had been hired to remove
a nineteenth- century portrait of the Virgin, which had been placed above
one of the nave’s walls (Nye, “The Talking Murals of Ixmiquilpan” 33).23
Itzmiquilpan’s murals were painted in tempera, using an adhesive,
which in this case was likely to have been the viscous juice of the prickly
pear or a similarly sticky substance found in local orchid bulbs (both being
pre-Hispanic techniques). They were executed “over a completely dry lime
enamel,” and therefore they do not constitute fresco painting in European
terms (buon fresco) (Carrillo y Gariel Técnica de la pintura de la Nueva Es-
paña 24). The painters used distinctive colors—blue, ochre, yellow, orange,
and green—that immediately recall the pigments used in pre- Columbian
and Indo-Hispanic mural paintings and codices, prepared in the same way
and using identical materials. In particular, green is employed in the man-
ner of Indian painting, reflecting its affinity for the intense color of jade
(chalchihuitl) and of quetzal feathers, both highly valued items in Meso-
american cultures. In this sense, it should be emphasized that the choice
of Indian pigments derived from minerals and plants and the fact that
these mural paintings were made by the Indians themselves constitute a
symbolic element per se in the form of a hybrid vehicle employed by the
friars to communicate the Christian values they were attempting to incul-
cate. On the other hand, it is possible that the method was used by the
Indian tlacuilos in order to convey a message that only the natives of the
region could decipher.
In order to justify the “war of pacification” undertaken by the Crown
and its representatives against members of the nomadic Chichimec
104 · Chapter 3
tribe, similar imagery was deployed. Of course, such a strategy as-

sumes that friars knowledgeable about pagan traditions (as Sahagún,
Motolinia, and, in this case, Joan de la Madalena and Andrés de Mata,
most certainly were) possessed a deep understanding of the dominated
culture.
The images were transferred onto the walls by a model drawn on paper,
most likely in the form of a post-Hispanic codex, owing to its symmetry
and to the harmonious design of the mural cycle as a whole.24 Nevertheless,
Olivier Debroise senses something deeper and more significant within
the apparent decorative repetition of the grottesco imagery found at Itzmi-
quilpan, since, in this case, it is an:
ornamental motif that collapses into an infinite hall of mirrors [while]

the conventional grottesco is anti-narrative, ahistorical: the actions, the
confrontations between monstrous or angelical characters are repeated,
but they never evolve or reach a conclusion. The painters at San Miguel
Itzmiquilpan also modified the figures, adding diverse attributes. Thus,
each segment displays an independent scene. By introducing these divi-
sions, inverting tracings, and diversifying the characters through precise
attributes, they provided a certain “sense” to the grottesco at San Miguel
Itzmiquilpan; although it does not comprise a complete narrative, it
does create a certain polarized tension towards the altar. In that way,
they rewrote the grottesco cycle within historical time, providing the
mural paintings with the appearance of a long procession, or a dance,
since the figures always appear in the same positions, as they would if
part of a choreography.25 (Debroise, “Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades
en tránsito” 163)
The pictorial program’s indigenous elements were subtly incorporated

within the formal guidelines of Renaissance design; this may be observed
in the acanthus leaves—the classical ornamentation of the Corinthian
capital—the tondos, and the composition’s general symmetry (figure 19).
Likewise, one of the few significant exceptions to the perspective-less
representation of pre- Columbian art may be witnessed here in the shad-
owing of the leaves of the Mediterranean plant. These characteristics
would most certainly suggest that a European designed the master plan,
while its hybrid nature provides evidence of a joint product created by
Indians and Spaniards—an extraordinary example of cultural and icono-
graphical syncretism. The end result—in this case a mural cycle—constitutes
an open book that resembles a huge extended codex.
Figure 19. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. Detail of the

tondos and acanthus leaves that imitate the style of certain artistic
representations characteristic of the Italian Renaissance. (Photo by
Michael Schuessler.)
Itzmiquilpan’s Pictorial Program and the

“Service Codex”
Many scholars have referred to the first image to be analyzed here as the
“Centaur” due to its similarity to the hybrid figure of classical mythology
(figure 20). The head of this equine creature is—literally—born from an
acanthus vine and is attached to the neck of a horse in a rather artificial
manner. The phenomenon of acanthus leaves producing human or fantas-
tic heads is reminiscent of the grottesco images to be found in the margina-
lia of numerous texts published in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe,
and, as has been pointed out, these books were brought to New Spain
shortly after the conquest (figure 21).
Despite its possible European origin, the head of this creature is shown
in profile and wears a quetzal feather headdress from which sprout acan-
thus leaves. The face has an angular nose, and the figure appears to be
speaking (the acanthus leaves are transformed into speech scrolls of Indian
origin that emerge from its open mouth). Because it incorporates denota-
tive systems widely used in the pre-Hispanic tradition, this image serves as
a clear example of pictorial hybridism. The unusual neck of this “Centaur”
is seen in the merging of what appears to be a third human arm combined
with the acanthus foliage born from it. The left limb is bent, and its hand
grasps three arrows, an image that immediately recalls the Augustinian
106 · Chapter 3
Figure 20. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. Detail

of the figure known as the “Centaur,” from the mural painting
that adorns the church’s nave. (Photo by Silvia González de
León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
emblem—a heart pierced by three arrows—and that likely alludes to the

previously mentioned insignia displayed on the church’s façade (figure 22,
p. 108). According to some researchers, the three arrows could also refer
to Acamapichtli, a Mexica tlatoani, predecessor of Moctezuma II Xocoy-
otzin, whose coat of arms bore three arrows: however, its presence within
the iconographic context of the spiritual conquest of the inhabitants of the
valley of El Mezquital has yet to be explained.
Figure 21. Frontispiece with acanthus leaves from a French edition

of Ovid’s La metamorphose figurée (Lyon: Jan de Tournes, 1557).
(Image taken from the Internet.)
In its right hand, this equestrian figure carries an Indian shield lined
with jaguar skin, along with an enormous bow. Although allegedly that of
a horse, its graceful body may actually be that of a deer. In his previously
cited work, James Lockhart analyzes the evolution of certain terms related
to the conquest and their resulting importance to contact studies from
the perspective of what he has baptized “new philology.” The use of the
Nahuatl term mazatl (deer) to describe the European horse is a typical case
of the first stage of this process of semantic assimilation. Moreover, accord-
ing to eyewitness accounts, such as that of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, when
the Mexica first saw the Conquistadors mounted on their steeds, it was be-
lieved that the rider and the horse embodied a single creature. Based on this
evidence, one might infer that this could indeed have been the source
of the image in question, for afterward they called the horse mazatl, for
lack of a Nahuatl word that could suitably describe what for them was an
entirely new animal. A black rope dangles from its neck, from which
hangs a bearded head,26 thus suggesting that it once belonged to a Euro-
pean (most of the Indians of this region lacked facial hair). Although the
representation of the decapitated head is not very detailed, pre-Hispanic
warriors traditionally displayed the severed heads of their victims on their
108 · Chapter 3
Figure 22. Augustinian coat of arms comprising a heart

pierced by three arrows, represented in the frontispiece of the
book Recognitio Summularum Reverendi Patris Illdephonsi a
Vera Cruce, published in New Spain in 1554. (In Joaquín Gar-
cía Icazbalceta, Bibliografía mexicana del siglo XVI [Mexico
City: Librería de Andrade y Morales, Sucesores, 1886].)
belts, and this tradition was often represented in Mesoamerican art, as

can be observed, for example, in the aforementioned mural paintings at
Bonampak, in the Mayan region of Chiapas. Additionally, the equine figure
is evocative of the image of Santiago Matamoros, patron saint of the Spanish
conquistadors and a popular artistic subject in which the saint is usually
represented riding a horse and wielding his sword, ready to behead infidels
and thus save Christendom. Some experts have also postulated that the fig-
ure is in fact a costume worn by two people at once. In that respect, it should
be recalled that in certain regions of contemporary Mexico some religious
festivals are still celebrated with a procession of men disguised as a variety of
animals, including horses and bulls. Elena Estrada de Gerlero takes this
possibility into account when she refers to Itzmiquilpan’s complex images:
Fray Andrés de Mata, a good painter, might have conceived the idea to
have the nave of the church decorated in order to celebrate the chapter
of 1572 with dignity; despite its novelty in painting, the subject employed
was common in dance. It could have been one more expression of a
spreading policy, as a result of the 1569 meetings of theologians, in order
to justify the repression of the Chichimecs. Therefore, Gonzalo de las
Casas’ Guerra de los chichimecas—although not published at the time—
the dances, and the mural paintings were all conceived for purposes of
propaganda, in which the manuscript had a historical nature, while its
equivalents—dances and paintings—were allegorical in nature. (“El
friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan” 18)
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the authorship of the
manuscript mentioned by Estrada de Gerlero—currently housed in the
Bibliotèque Nationale de France—was attributed to the chronicler of the In-
dies, Gil González de Ávila, the aforementioned encomendero from the area
around Itzmiquilpan.27 However, in an appendix to the only known edi-
tion of this document, published by Vargas Rea in an abridged form in
1944, and entitled “Conjeturas sobre quién pudo ser el autor” (“Conjec-
tures Regarding the Identity of the Author”), the bibliophile and turn- of-
the- century chronicler Luis González Obregón (1865–1938) notes that
Fray Alonso Zurita (1512–1585), a “remarkable chronicler and magistrate of
the sixteenth century” and author of such books as the Relación de algunas
de las muchas cosas notables que hay en la Nueva España y de su conquista
y pacificación y de la conversion de los naturales de ella (Account of Some of
the Many Remarkable Things of New Spain and of Its Conquest and Pacifica-
tion and the Conversion of Its Natives), incorporated an index of the names of
all the historians of the Indies that he knew of at the beginning of his work.
Curiously, González de Ávila is not mentioned in this index as the author of
the work in question. However, Gonzalo de las Casas is mentioned, for:
it has been maintained that he wrote a work entitled De las gentes de la

Nueva España, especialmente de las chichimecas [Of the People of New
110 · Chapter 3
Spain, Particularly of the Chichimec] and it is said that he was “most

curious about the things of that land and its natives, as his manuscript
proves; likewise, he shows much skill and great judgment and a very apt
and rich wit, and he brings some very curious things and plenty of deli-
cate reasons to prove what he says, and many authorities from the Sa-
cred Scriptures and Catholic and secular authors. (quoted in Gonzalo
de las Casas, Guerra de los chichimecas 12–13)
Indeed, the document that is now entitled Guerra de los chichimecas

(War of the Chichimecs) presents the same rhetorical characteristics and
scholarly arguments, being a detailed summary of the customs practiced
by the diverse Indian groups that inhabited the northern region of New
Spain and who were collectively referred to as Chichimecs, a compound
term whose equivalent in Nahuatl is “dog that drags its rope.” His chroni-
cle was conceived and presented as enough evidence to promote what the
author considered a “just cause” against these indigenous groups who as-
sailed the colonizers, missionaries, and miners without mercy. However, it
should be pointed out that this occurred only after the natives had been
repeatedly deceived and abused by the Spanish authorities. In order to
prove this right of conquest and their subsequent “obligation” to enslave
the seminomadic inhabitants of this desolate zone, whose constant attacks
against mule trains obstructed the extraction and exportation of abundant
silver in the region, the author points out that “according to Saint Thomas
and all the doctors [of the Church], in order for a war to be just and be
carried out in good conscience, it requires three parts or qualities: a just
cause, the Prince’s authorization, and honest intention” (Gonzalo de las
Casas, Guerra de los chichimecas 40).
In the author’s detailed descriptions of the Indians and their customs
one may find references that cast a light on the possible direct (histori-
cal) sources that were turned into a political-religious allegory in the
context of the mural painting program conceived and executed for the
monastery at Itzmiquilpan. For example, the author describes “the rites
and ways of all these Chichimecs, which are quite remarkable because
they have fully proved their human nature, and so isolated from the ways
and common lives of all men who never cease to admire how they live
and survive (28). He also documents some of their more remarkable col-
lective activities, such as a marked tendency toward ritual dance, partic-
ularly within a bellicose context, a description that conjures up the
images of some of the human figures depicted on the walls of the nave at
Itzmiquilpan’s church:
And when they are to kill a captive, they dance around him, and they even
make him dance, and the Spaniards have understood that this is the
way in which they sacrifice him, although it seems to me that it’s a form
of cruelty that the Devil or their evil ways have taught them, so they will
not be horrified by the death of men, and rather they kill them with
pleasure and as a pastime, as one kills a hare or a deer. (Gonzalo de las
Casas, Guerra de los chichimecas 29)
In another section of his brief forty-four-page history, las Casas again

describes this custom of the Chichimecs, who, he notes, always performed
and danced in puris naturalibus, shrieking and howling; these gestures
were subsequently visually represented in the form of speech scrolls in the
mural cycle at Itzmiquilpan:
Their dances are extremely different from all others practiced here.
They dance at night, around a fire, their arms tied together, with [ . . . ]
cries, and those who have seen them think that they lack order, although
they must deploy them with certain arrangement. They carry no tune
and in the midst of this dance they present the captive that they want to
kill, and as they enter each one receives an arrow, until the time comes
when one of them feels like taking it and shoots the captive. (Guerra de
los chichimecas 34–35)
Some of the celebrations mentioned by Estrada de Gerlero also concern

the historical and mythical aspects of the conquest, by means of which the
Indian participants mocked the Spanish conquistadors, their costumes,
their dances, and the strange beasts that they mounted. This theory is sup-
ported by the fact that in the mural program at Itzmiquilpan the human
elements of the “Centaur” are painted a different color than the rest of the
figure, and by the fact that the animal has human feet that sport Indian
sandals (cactli). Perhaps the original source of this figure may have been a
bestiary brought to the Indies by a European friar or, as has been previ-
ously suggested, in a pictorial reference found among the marginalia that
adorned the frontispieces of many of the period’s religious and secular
books used to educate the Indians. With regard to Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial
program, Estrada de Gerlero considers that “this grottesco seems to be
based directly upon a decorative margin found in a Venetian book; it is
analogous to that which adorns the margins of Malermi’s Biblia Italica,
inspired by Mantegna’s classicism” (“El friso monumental de Itzmiquil-
pan” 10) (figure 23). The extraordinary metamorphosis, both structural
112 · Chapter 3
Figure 23. A page from Niccoló Malermi’s Biblia Italica (Venice,

1490). (Photo taken from the Internet.)
and symbolic, that inspires this figure’s composition may be found in the
transformation of a traditional Western motif into a symbolic image that
the Indians could recognize, thus becoming a representative example of
how such an iconographic assimilation took place within the context of
the spiritual colonization of New Spain, while also underlining its inti-
mate relationship with the printed book.
Despite the theories proposed by the aforementioned scholars, it would
appear that it is Olivier Debroise who, through the systematic study of many
of the surviving documents concerning Itzmiquilpan and the surrounding

region, discovers the mural paintings’ textual base in a “service codex” ex-
ecuted by the local Otomi nobility, who often employed such visual narra-
tives in order to obtain certain privileges from the Spanish Crown. However,
it must be pointed out that most of these documents were created in a later
period—they date to the early eighteenth century—that does not corre-
spond to the time in which this mural painting program was developed,
although it does constitute a document of the region’s historical events,
from the pre-Hispanic period until the time of Spanish colonization. Con-
sequently, their authenticity and historical relevance should be considered
with care. According to Debroise:
Preserved in copies and translations made around the middle of the sev-
enteenth century or at the dawn of the eighteenth century, they match
both the structure, as well as numerous details of the mural painting
program at San Miguel Itzmiquilpan, and they seem inspired by an ex-
ceptional oral tradition, perhaps the script for some narrative dance or an
entremés. One of these texts, the Relación de méritos de d. Pedro Martín
de Toro, pacificador indígena, de la vasta región chichimeca (Account of the
Merits of Don Pedro Martín de Toro, Indian Peacemaker of the Vast Chi-
chimec Region), was written in the Otomi language, although it is sprin-
kled with Castilian words and even sentences. (“Imaginario fronterizo
/Identidades en tránsito” 165– 66)
If this hypothesis is proved to be at least partially correct, it might be

speculated that Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial program is based on an artistic in-
terpretation of some sort of Indo- Christian performance developed within
the region’s bellicose historical context. Although no other extant mural
paintings from the period inspired by such a ritual have yet been uncov-
ered, the specific circumstances surrounding the creation of this mural
program warrant this particular interpretation. It should be recalled that
the images in question were created at the same time as the 1572 chapter
was celebrated in the monastery at Itzmiquilpan and that the principal
motive for the chapter was to discuss the recurrent danger posed by the
Chichimec raids against the region’s peaceful Otomi communities, most
of which were inhabited by recently Christianized Indians.
Although it is true that Gonzalo de las Casas does not comment on
the 1572 chapter at Itzmiquilpan, in his Guerra de los chichimecas he
does allude to the meeting of theologians that took place in New Spain’s
capital, and he makes use of the conclusions supported by this group of
114 · Chapter 3
friars—most of whom were surely members of the period’s three mission-

ary orders—in order to promote his own ideas about the bello giusto while
connecting this political conflict to the essential motif of the Augustinian
monastery’s iconographic program:
And it [is] unnecessary to prove any of these causes or show that they are
just without bringing up or quoting texts for that purpose, because it will
suffice to have Your Excellency the Viceroy around here the month of
October of the year 1569, convened by religious theologians from the three
orders, who were gathered to take counsel and ask for each other’s opin-
ion, to decide if in all fairness and in good conscience war could be made
against these Chichimec, and they all agreed and there signed their names,
that not only could it be done, but that it was an obligation to wage war
against them, and in their opinion prisoners should provide their services
for a limited time. (Gonzalo de las Casas, Guerra de los chichimecas 51)
Consequently, the development of a pictorial program whose subject

matter is precisely that of a battle between civilized (Christianized) Indi-
ans and the barbarian tribes of the North—although presented in the form
of an allegorical psychomachia—does provide a satisfactory explanation
vis-à-vis the true meaning of this composition and in turn clarifies how it
might have been executed in the nave of Itzmiquilpan’s church.
In the following image (figure 24, p. 115), the battle scene continues, this
time represented in a melee between Spanish and Christianized Indian
warriors against a band of Chichimec rebels. The first figure to the right
(and not visible in the plate) has been partially destroyed, and only the head
and part of a torso interwoven within the ubiquitous acanthus vine remain.
More acanthus leaves emerge from his mouth, and yet again these appear
to denote the speech scrolls found in pre-Hispanic codices. Because of their
fragmented articulation, in staccato, they convey the idea that the warrior
is shouting at, or perhaps admonishing, his enemy. Although in this case a
representational code was being used for motives that had not been con-
sidered by the tlacuilos since pre-Hispanic times, the use of the speech
scroll in this mural painting cycle was employed to address a purely Chris-
tian matter: a psychomachia, that is, the battle between Good and Evil, in
this case between Catholicism and paganism. The lower figure carries a
round shield and clutches an arrow in his hand, while gesticulating toward
the rest of the scene. His body sprouts directly from the acanthus leaves,
and this mutation reminds us of that first observed in the figure of the
“Centaur.” The first figure that has been preserved in its entirety to this day
Figure 24. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. A warrior trapped

within the omnipresent acanthus vine. (Photo by Michael Schuessler.)
is a forceful one as well, as is clearly shown by the position of its arms and
legs. He lifts a pantli (a Mexica banner crowned with a wreath of feathers)
that breaks the horizontal margins of the composition that encloses it
within a pictorial-narrative frame. Although it may be tempting to directly
relate this phenomenon with techniques used in pre-Hispanic mural
paintings (those of Bonampak, for example), it should be pointed out that
this phenomenon is also frequent in Western art, for example, during the
Greco-Roman period in the decoration of polychrome craters and am-
phorae. The warrior figure also holds a large bow and is scantily clad—
both characteristics that help identify him as a Chichimec. The reclining
figure in the center of the composition also raises a pantli (banner) while
being attacked by a bearded (albeit barefoot) hidalgo (knight) who carries
a shield upon which a mysterious (and hirsute) head is inscribed and that
seems to have been severed. In this sense, it is similar to the one that ap-
pears by its side, which seems to be floating in midair, although here it has
been frozen in space. It is difficult to identify the countenance that appears
emblazoned on the shield, since it would appear to be either a representa-
tion of Jesus Christ or, possibly, of the Apostle Santiago, Spain’s patron
saint. If one takes into consideration the embellishment of the banners
and shields of the time (for example, that of Cortés displayed the image of
116 · Chapter 3
the Blessed Virgin), she would be the most likely contender, although the
(albeit semi- effaced) countenance emblazoned on this shield contradicts
this assumption.
Curiously, this presumably European figure holds a copilli, or crest, a
pre-Hispanic ornament indicating the individual’s nobility—the reso-
nance of pre-Hispanic symbolic codes recently put to the ser vice of a new
political and religious reality. He wields a macahuitl, the fearsome Mexica
sword inlaid with obsidian, commonly known as a macana (club), with
which he has apparently injured the central figure. Although we know,
thanks to chroniclers such as Díaz del Castillo, that the Spaniards quickly
adopted the light, yet protective, cotton armor used by the Mexica, there
are no documents to indicate that they may have also appropriated Indian
weapons, since their muskets and the gunpowder they consumed provided
the invaders with a novel weapon that proved to be very effective against
the Indians. A truncated head appears near, or perhaps attached to, the
torso of the hidalgo, having likely been recently severed from the body of
an enemy. To one side of the hidalgo the legs of an equestrian creature
wielding a serpent’s tail are visible, along with the face of another Euro-
pean soldier who also wields a macana and carries a shield. Beneath the
torso of this “monster” lies the body of its victim, probably the original
proprietor of the previously mentioned head. The most extraordinary as-
pect of this composition is the fact that the victorious hidalgo has already
been crowned with another copilli, and he seems, given the connotation
of this pre- Columbian adornment, to have the support and respect of
those who designed and painted this image.28 Olivier Debroise claims to
have discovered the textual source of this series of images in the Relación
de Martín de Toro (figure 25), since:
In the first of the eight pages of this brief codex, underneath a landscape
of hills and rivers, Martín himself appears, in his Meco attire, with his
breastplate, fluffy headdress, his quiver and arrows. A crown indicates his
noble rank. He faces a Chichimec, the “striped” captain Mazpil, who
also appears between them, shooting an arrow. Curiously, despite the
naïve strokes, the composition may remind us of the tripartite composi-
tion of some sections of the southern wall at San Miguel Itzmiquilpan,
and some of its elements are identical, such as the eagle standing atop
the prickly pear on the far right. Some of Martín’s comrades-in-arms
may be seen in the lower part of the drawing. (Debroise 170)
One of the most extraordinary images included in Itzmiquilpan’s mural

cycle is the “Dragon,” that is, an enormous scaled beast crowned with a
Figure 25. Account by Martín de Toro (detail), seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. (Photo from the book by David Wright,
Conquistadores otomíes en la Guerra Chichimeca (Otomí Con-
querors in the Chichimec War) [Querétaro: Secretaría de Cul-
tura y Bienestar Social, Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro,
1988].)
curious headdress made of quetzal feathers and acanthus leaves. This

exotic creature is attached to the apparently infinite acanthus vine that,
as has been seen, spreads throughout the mural painting (figure 26). The
scaled beast seizes a victim with a humanoid hand, while his victim moans
in agony; once again, the representation of emotional speech is expressed
through the broken—or staccato—treatment to be found in the native
118 · Chapter 3
Figure 26. San Miguel Arcángel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. The

“Dragon,” a mythological figure inspired by European fantasy
and recreated in one of Itzmiquilpan’s murals. (Photo by Silvia
González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
speech scrolls. The victim clasps a stone with his hand and wields his
macana, while the monster seizes his bow with his other hand.29 Near the
animal’s hooves, a human foot belonging to a warrior wielding a macana
may be observed. This blond figure—which, as in other essential sections
of the mural painting, has been partially destroyed—wears a costume
made of acanthus leaves, while a human head is fixed to its shoulder. This
may be a representation of Saint Michael, patron of Itzmiquilpan’s church,

the angel who slaughtered the serpent of Christian tradition and who sub-
sequently defends Christians against Satan. In this context of overt biblical
symbolism, it may be perceived that this is also one of the few occasions
in which the European perspective is employed in the depiction of a
main scene, particularly conspicuous behind the dragon, where a beauti-
fully executed human countenance appears, with thick eyebrows and
large almond-shaped eyes. It is a most naturalistic representation, and,
although the figure carries a shield and the ubiquitous macana, it is defini-
tively European.
As one would expect, there are nearly as many interpretations of these
mural paintings as researchers who have analyzed them. However,
some monographs have made par ticular contributions toward a deeper
understanding of the provocative images found inside the Augustinian
monastery at Itzmiquilpan. The first, written by Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel
as Itzmiquilpan’s official guide, provides general information along with
some considerations about the historical importance of this mural cycle. The
author postulates that certain Indian figures are representations of “good”
and that they are attacked by the mythological beasts that appear through-
out the mural painting program, as well as those that are literally born
from the acanthus vine. According to this scholar, these monsters repre-
sent “evil,” while the other Indian warriors represent “sin.”30
For her part, Elena Estrada de Gerlero points out that the Chichimec
war is the subject matter of Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings, positing that
they were executed between 1569—the year in which theologians convened
in New Spain’s capital to discuss the legitimacy of this battle—and 1572,
when the chapter was held at Itzmiquilpan (quoted in Pierce, “Identifica-
tion of the Warriors in the Frescoes of Ixmiquilpan” 2). This information
helps identify some of the historical elements that appear in what she has
dubbed Itzmiquilpan’s “monumental frieze.” This very task was later un-
dertaken by Donna Pierce who, following Estrada de Gerlero’s theories,
attempts to identify the Indian figures derived from the warriors’ costume
and weapons. Basing her arguments on various codices produced in the
valley of Mexico, she suggests that the bow and arrow not only represent
the word “Chichimec,” but that the macana and the shield likewise are
used to indicate the Toltec race, which is considered to have created the
most advanced civilization of Middle America.31
When all the information about the historical-religious meaning of these
images has been firmly established, an interpretation that explains their
presence in the nave of a Catholic church, especially given the iconographic
120 · Chapter 3
restrictions imposed by the Council of Trent, may be proposed. Neverthe-

less, for now, in light of the analysis of a few of the most significant images
in this mural cycle, it may be clearly perceived that although the pictorial
program incorporates references to the Christian faith, it also draws upon
Indian sources, and that this work is the result of the merging or syncretism
of both cultures’ artistic traditions, even though it was designed by (and for)
a specific audience: the recently converted Indian population of Itzmiquil-
pan and its neighboring indigenous communities on the eve of an impor-
tant ecumenical gathering.
According to my interpretation, some of the figures are indeed Spaniards,
and their involvement in this war against men and beasts illustrates some
of the aforementioned historical allegories, which are interwoven into the
discourse of the mural cycle. If one takes into account the dual role of the
Spanish conquistadors as conquerors and evangelizers, it may be seen how
their warlike actions have been connected with mythical-religious con-
quests (e.g., Saint Michael versus Satan). In the case of Itzmiquilpan’s picto-
rial program, some scholars have proposed that its textual source may be
found in several letters or “service codices” addressed to Phillip II by mem-
bers of the region’s Otomi nobility who describe, among other events, some
of the processions and dances carried out to commemorate the victory over
the region’s fearsome Chichimec warriors. Olivier Debroise concludes:
The Augustinian friars reacted to the “revolt” of the northern nations—in

fact, the legitimate defense of their territories—with a symbolic, represen-
tative rebellion; a choreographic and pictorial counter-offensive in which
diverse codes are interwoven, in a prodigious cultural bricolage. They do
not only resort to their own medieval background, but also employ certain
rules of ritual circularity, which had been encoded by Middle-American
cultures. In this operation, time collapses into itself and becomes one, in
the time of a pre-Hispanic celebration, that of the 1502 Chichimec con-
quest. (“Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades en tránsito” 172)
This historical reality led to a phenomenon that created an artistic syn-

thesis which, aside from lending an epic scale to the battle waged by the
Spaniards in the valley of Mexico and subsequently along its northern fron-
tier, provides the spectator with the ideological (and textual) contexts that
justify the violent imposition of a foreign culture in this region. The repre-
sentation of the Spaniards and their Indian allies as bearers of the true and
only faith absolved them of their bloody actions, thus transforming them
into apostolic-warriors whose justified appropriation of the Indian world
did not exclude the conquest of their imagination.
At the same time, it should be noted that dramatic performances of the

wars waged between the Nahuas and their Otomi allies against the fear-
some Chichimecs, or Mecos, had also been documented in the valley of
Mexico, particularly by Bernal Díaz del Castillo who, in chapter 170 of his
True History of the Conquest of New Spain, relates “how there were great
feasts and banquets and joy in Mexico to celebrate the armistice between
the most Christian emperor, our blessed Lord, and the French King, Don
Francisco.”32 Re-creating some of the most memorable aspects of these
“feasts and banquets” of 1539, the elderly foot soldier describes a rather dra-
matic scene in which both the primary and secondary elements echo
Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial program developed thirty years later but, neverthe-
less, still a quotidian reality:
At daybreak, the main square of Mexico had been transformed into a

forest, with such a diversity of trees, as natural as if they had sprouted
there. In the forest there were many deer, rabbits, hares, foxes, coyotes,
and many other types of small creatures from the land, and two lion
cubs, and four small tigers, and they had them in pens that had been
built in the forest itself; the animals couldn’t get out until it was neces-
sary to throw them out to be hunted. There were other dense groves, a
little ways from the forest, and in each of them was a troop of savages,
with their knotted and twisted clubs, and other savages with bows and ar-
rows, and they went hunting, because in that instant [the beasts] were re-
leased from the pens and they chased them through the forest and appeared
on the main square and there they killed them, one group of savages mixed
with the other, a question of honor among them. (Díaz del Castillo, The
True History of the Conquest of New Spain 761– 62, emphasis added)
Thanks to Díaz del Castillo’s concise description of this civic perfor-

mance, among the cast of anonymous Indian characters, we perceive the
presence of two distinct groups of warriors: one, perhaps using Nahua gear,
with “knotted and twisted clubs” (i.e., macanas), and the other, as Mecos,
“with bows and arrows.” Although this civic representation was born of a
different and previous historical context, and could likewise be reminis-
cent of European (Nordic) traditions with regard to the representation of
savages, it suggests that it may have been feasible to employ these two
groups of antagonistic Indians within a dramatic context that already had
some regional characteristics of New Spain. In this case, it suggests the
about-face (or, in Lockhart’s words, a case of double mistaken identity) of
the concept of civilization and barbarism itself, skillfully transported and
addressed to the immediate concerns of the inhabitants of New Spain’s
122 · Chapter 3
capital, seventeen years after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. This binary

opposition was used in a historical-political sense, in the form of an ideologi-
cal clash that was recast at Itzmiquilpan to incorporate, iconographically,
the spiritual psychomachia inspired in the danger faced by the new reli-
gious communities located in the furthest reaches of New Spain’s northern
frontier.
It is worthwhile to remember that in his Apologética historia sumaria,
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, the famous Dominican theologian, also dedi-
cates several pages of his lengthy work to describe the Indian’s notable ca-
pacity to stage
both secular and ecclesiastical and Christian representations, especially

those of our Redemption, and to make and organize and celebrate pro-
cessions, the days of the Corpus Christi festivities or other solemn occa-
sions that the church regularly celebrates, and in such exquisite and
new ways that they create, and of how many and diverse things they
present and use to adorn and fulfill and improve the acts that they in-
tend to perform and the processions of the solemn festivities and days
that they celebrate. (vol. 2, 328)
In a detailed reference to one of these performances—he did not witness

all of them—de las Casas copies in full “what a member of the honored
and distinguished Franciscans gave me in writing; at the time he was
the guardian of the San Francisco monastery, in the city of Tlascala.” The
aforementioned Franciscan was surely Fray Toribio de Benavente, also
known as Motolinia, at that time guardian of the Franciscan monastery at
Tlaxcala, where he wrote one of his most significant works. In the exten-
sive quote apparently taken from a distinct version from the one that exists
today of his History of the Indians of New Spain, Motolinia describes a
scene not unlike the one described in detail by Bernal Díaz del Castillo.
However, in this case, it was carried out within the religious context of the
celebration of Corpus. Nevertheless, the same scenography and the pres-
ence of two Indian groups appear in the background, perhaps a little
hidden behind the scenes taken from the Old Testament, but they are
reminiscent of the iconography of Actopan’s mural painting program,
which will be discussed in the next chapter:
Adam and Eve and the serpent that tricked them were represented in
the first of those hills. On the second hill, the temptation of Our Lord
[was represented]. On the third, Saint Jerome, and, on the fourth, our
father Saint Francis, and so that nothing that imitated nature was lacking,
hunters well hidden in the mountains, with their bows and arrows, hunters
that usually speak another language called otomitlh, and as almost all of
them live in the hills, most of them make a living by hunting, so that, in
order to see them, one had to keep one’s eyes peeled, because they were so
well concealed and camouflaged so in branches and flowers, that their
prey came almost to their feet. Before they shot their arrows, these hunters
gestured a lot. (quoted in de las Casas, Apologética historia sumaria, vol.
2, 331, emphasis added)
In the respective descriptions of two early dramatic performances in

New Spain—one civic, the other religious—carried out in two of the most
important political centers of the Nahua world, we observe an important—
and syncretic—transformation of the universal struggle between civiliza-
tion and barbarism, carried out by the representation of man’s two
antagonistic extremes and underscored by the historical-political rele-
vance of the Chichimec war at the time. Here, by means of a fascinating
cultural transformation, the traditional European representation of the
bearded savage wielding a club appears again in the New World as a sym-
bol of what would years later be considered the prototype of Rousseau’s
“noble savage,” in this case, clearly inspired by the Nahua and a represen-
tative of their civilization, in opposition to another, even more savage
group, represented by members of the “Chichimec nation,” identified in
both works by their outstanding use of bows and arrows. Both groups of
“well concealed” characters—previously relegated to the mythological
world, but having suddenly acquired a historical presence in New Spain—
appear within “very dense groves,” an ideal setting for their battle, a war
that becomes eternal within the context of Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings,
and that is interpreted as a battle between good and evil, in the form of a
mythopoetic allegory inspired by the classical author Prudentius. Itzmiquil-
pan’s warriors, themselves surrounded by a dense forest of acanthus leaves
and other phytomorphic figures, undertake this war between good and
evil, between the civilized and acculturated Otomi and the savage Mecos
with their bows and arrows, thus merging a sociopolitical reality (that of
the barbaric Chichimec raids against Christianized Indian settlements)
with a perpetual struggle between good and evil that the deft supervisor
at Itzmiquilpan (very likely, Fray Andrés de Mata) perpetuated through this
extraordinary mural program.
Chapter Four
The Last Judgment

Mural Painting and Missionary Theater
Franciscan and Augustinian Millennialism
Fernando Horcasitas has located the most detailed reference to the Spanish-
American Apocalypse, the day in which the Final Judgment is to take
place, in the Doctrina cristiana en lengua española y mexicana por los reli-
giosos de la Orden de Santo Domingo (Christian Doctrine in the Spanish
and Mexican Languages by the Order of Santo Domingo):
The seventh article and knowledge of the Son of God as a man is that
we must firmly believe that he shall come again from Heaven to judge
the living and the dead. And be on the lookout my beloved [children],
because at the end of the world, there will be no one alive, neither a
single man, nor a single woman; we shall all rise from the dead and we
shall again take the bodies that we now have, by God’s command. And
after everyone has risen from the dead and returned to life, they will all
then gather in a valley known as Valley of Josaphat, near Jerusalem,
where our Saviour died. And all of us, all the men of the universe, shall
gather there to be judged. (quoted in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl:
Épocas novohispana y moderna 561)
In general terms, it may be stated that millennialism—along with the

open chapel, the pictorial canvas, and other inventions designed or adapted
in New Spain—was introduced and developed in Mexico by the Francis-
can order.1 This apocalyptic vision, along with architectural innovations
124
The Last Judgment · 125
and certain didactic programs, was gradually adopted by other monastic

orders that arrived after the Franciscans, particularly the Augustinians.
This eagerness to imitate the actions originally undertaken by the Francis-
cans was documented in Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana (Palomera
1963), in which he sets forth the inventiveness of his order versus that of
others that arrived after the apostolic year 1524.
According to Miguel Ángel Fernández, author of La Jerusalén indiana
(The Indian Jerusalem), the first Franciscans who settled in New Spain
were fervent admirers of the Cistercian abbot Joachim de Fiore (ca. 1135–
1202), known as the arch-prophet of the Apocalypse, whose writings were
eagerly consulted and justly feared by many contemporary friars (31).2 As
an example of the vast influence wielded by the medieval theologian on
the Franciscans who settled in New Spain, Fernández mentions that Fray
Andrés de Olmos, guardian of Tecamachalco, Puebla, and presumed au-
thor of the missionary play entitled the Auto del juicio final, was a firm
believer in the “doctrine of the three ages” and closely studied Fiore’s
revelations (Fernández 119).3 Although certain aspects of “Joachinism”
are reminiscent of the Albigensian and Dulcinian heresies, two bastions of
revolutionary scholasticism during the European Middle Ages, the atti-
tude of the mendicants who disembarked in New Spain was closer to the
humanist ideas of the Renaissance.4 Thanks to this most eclectic (and
divergent) philosophical and theological repertoire, Fernández concludes
that “in the mind of these missionaries, the reforms brought about by Car-
dinal Cisneros were mixed with Erasmist notions, the best of Christian
humanism along with shades of Joachinism” (46). This hypothesis is con-
firmed by a close examination of the readings of Mexico’s first bishop, the
Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga who was an admirer of Erasmus of Rotter-
dam, as well as those of his coreligionist Vasco de Quiroga, founder of a
Utopian community in the Purépecha region of Michoacán, directly in-
spired by Thomas More’s Utopia.5
In his landmark study of New Spain’s architecture, George Kubler es-
tablishes the intimate relationship between More’s theory and Quiroga’s
practice. The first town established on the banks of Lake Pátzcuaro was
baptized with the name Santa Fe, a tribute to the Christian camp estab-
lished by the Catholic monarchs Fernando and Isabel during the siege of
Granada in 1491. The creation of this unique community, located in what
is now the state of Michoacán, constitutes the earliest expression of Erasmist
and humanist ideas of social and religious reform implemented in New
Spain. In his final years, Quiroga explicitly declared that he had designed
his communities in Michoacán using More’s Utopia as a philosophical and
126 · Chapter 4
social model (Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century 11).

Quiroga’s personal copy of More’s treatise, filled with careful notations, has
been preserved.
Miguel León-Portilla supports this notion, pointing out that the first
friars were trained with a vision in which the main concern was the Indian
population of Mesoamerica, people who, from a Christian perspective,
were free from sin, had no bonds with the past, and therefore had been
appointed to inaugurate an idyllic age. Men like Quiroga “thought and
felt that, in the midst of the drama of the Conquest and its aftermath, it
was still possible to rescue the most relevant aspects of this Indian cultural
past. Acting on this assumption, and not within a cultural vacuum, they
believed that a new Christendom could be recreated as pure, and almost
Utopian, as the early Church” (quoted in Tovar de Teresa, 47). Guided by
Edmundo O’Gorman’s theories, Octavio Paz analyzes the inherent (both
geographical and theological) problems posed by the “discovery” of a
new part of the earth, the quarta pars orbis, while insisting on the idea of
some sort of tabula rasa, or what Eduardo Subirats has called an “empty
continent,” due to the almost flawless condition of the American natives.
According to Paz, this constituted a significant mystification, because
“America was not only a geographical novelty, but also a theological con-
firmation: despite its horrors and errors, the Conquest was part of sacred
history. A prodigious misunderstanding: neither was the Indian soul docile
clay, nor was America an innocent land: it was history” (quoted in Tovar de
Teresa, 13– 40).
The gradual revelation of millions of innocent native souls was seen
by many theologians as a divine signal, while some monks believed that it
was a clear sign that Armageddon was approaching. But before the arrival
of the last day, “the natives of the New World would be converted to
Christianity—according to Erasmus’ interpretation—and they would live
in ideal societies, according to More’s Utopia” (Tovar de Teresa, 36).
Moreover, this providentialism recalls the existence of two opposing ideals
that, to a certain extent, define the spiritual conquest of Mexico, both in
theory and in practice: “The Indian Jerusalem oscillated between two ideals
one was the innocent heavenly scene of the first sacred book; the other con-
sisted of the fear caused by the terrible Apocalypse of the last book [ . . . ] a
cosmic drama” (155).
Although New Spain’s millennialism was originally an exclusively
Franciscan trend, it was also cultivated and spread by members of the
Augustinian order. Artistic examples are to be found in the pictorial—
and apocalyptic—evidence still visible at Acolman, Itzmiquilpan, and
Actopan and in the chapel located at Santa María de Xoxoteco, all of

which are located in New Spain’s northern (Chichimec) border. With re-
gard to the Augustinians, it will be recalled that the order’s founder, Au-
gustine of Hippo, was also the author of Civitas Dei, one of the West’s
most original Utopian proposals before the appearance of Thomas More’s
work in 1516.6 From what may be gleaned in surviving documents, the
Augustinian order enjoyed a special relationship with that of the Francis-
cans (the latter were the first to arrive in New Spain and received Arch-
bishop Zumárraga’s direct support); works that combine the philosophies
of both evangelizing orders have been located. Perhaps the most extraor-
dinary case may be found in the structure and content of the Historia
eclesiástica indiana, written by Franciscan Gerónimo de Mendieta, and
inspired by Civitas Dei, basically in its attempt to reconcile classical ideas
of a Platonic nature with Sacred Truth.7 Kubler emphasizes this notion,
stating that the three orders had identical moral goals, while their differ-
ences appeared only on a superficial level, which could be witnessed in
their evangelistic techniques and methods (Mexican Architecture of the
Sixteenth Century 3). Despite unanimity concerning the ultimate evan-
gelistic goals shared by members of the various ecclesiastical orders, John
McAndrew has uncovered a significant difference regarding the Augus-
tinian’s philosophy concerning the natives and their par ticular problems,
a variance that promotes a better understanding of this monastic com-
munity’s surprising activity. McAndrew proposes that the Augustinians
promoted humanism to a greater degree than other religious orders in New
Spain, essentially because they were the ones who most emphasized the
Indian’s high moral understanding. For example, the Franciscans some-
times prohibited the Indians from receiving sacraments, while the Augus-
tinians allowed their neophytes to take communion and, when dying, to
receive extreme unction. Moreover, as has been seen, the Augustinians
introduced a Christian humanism that took deeper roots than that pro-
moted by their religious colleagues, most likely because they recognized
in the Indian a spiritual preparation that reduced the time necessary for
their indoctrination (McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-
Century Mexico 14). Owing to this apparent Augustinian liberalism, the
greatest Indian influence on iconographic programs is to be found in those
cycles located in Augustinian monasteries, since their founders established
a deeper (more human, perhaps) and less patronizing relationship with
their native catechumen.
128 · Chapter 4
Andrés de Olmos’s Auto del juicio final (The Last

Judgment): New Spain’s First Religious Drama
In the first chapter of this book The Last Judgment was mentioned be-
cause it became the subject matter of the first dramatic performance
known in New Spain, the Nexcuitilmachiotl motenehua Juicio Final (Ex-
emplum Called the Last Judgment), a work probably written by the first
Franciscan expert in Nahua culture, Andrés de Olmos, who arrived in
New Spain’s capital in December 1528 in the company of Mexico’s first
bishop-elect, Fray Juan de Zumárraga. In order to achieve a better under-
standing of the historical and theological context of this alarming exem-
plum, it should be recalled that, prior to his departure to the Americas,
Olmos had worked with Zumárraga in Spain in a concerted effort to eradi-
cate witchcraft in what is now the Basque Country. This point should be
emphasized because it reveals that before arriving in New Spain, Olmos
was already highly trained in this particular branch of religious studies.
Consequently, he would have doubtlessly applied his Old World experi-
ence in New Spain as part of the process of stamping out the Middle-
American “demons” that the Indians were believed to worship.
Moreover, according to Georges Baudot, specialist in the life and work
of the Franciscan friar, Olmos pioneered the attempt to
introduce into the consciousness of [the Mexican] natives the elements

of a European demonology that had its origins in a twenty-six-year- old
Spanish model [through his work that develops] the genesis of certain
syncretisms, in the re-interpretation of Christian doctrines by the Indi-
ans (perhaps against Olmos’ wishes). (Olmos, Tratado de hechicerías y
sortilegios vi)
According to Baudot, Olmos resorted to a Spanish treatise written in

1527 by one of his colleagues, the Franciscan Martín de Castañas, cleric
of the Holy Inquisition who, like Olmos, was an expert in demonology and
exorcisms: “Apart from certain adaptations that were necessary for the Mexi-
can audience and some personal contributions made by Olmos in relation
to the specific purposes of the evangelization of New Spain in 1533, he
follows every facet of the thesis and substance of the model from Logroño”
(Olmos, Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios x).
In his revealing introduction to the Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios
(Treatise on Witchcraft and Sorcery], written by Olmos around 1533, Bau-
dot affirms that this Franciscan should rightly be considered “the real
founder of his order’s ethnographic and historical investigations regarding

the pre-Hispanic cultures of central Mexico” (ix). Unfortunately, this
work, written upon the request of the chairman of the Second Viceregal
Court of Mexico and in which various aspects of pre-Hispanic civiliza-
tion were discussed, has been lost. However, its existence was documented
by certain Franciscan chroniclers such as Gerónimo de Mendieta, who
mentions it in the prologue of book II of his Historia eclesiástica indiana.
A summa that was extrapolated from this first ethnography of the native
communities of the valley of Mexico has also been recorded, composed
by Olmos upon the request of Bartolomé de las Casas and finished around
1539.
Despite a tireless ethnographic activity that anticipated that of Ber-
nardino de Sahagún, who might have been inspired by his fellow Franciscan,
Olmos is best remembered for his Arte para aprender la lengua mexicana
(Manual to Learn the Mexican Language), the first known work dedicated
to Nahuatl grammar, to which he added a series of huehuetlatolli, or ad-
vice of the elders, dating back to 1547 (Sahagún would also include this
appendix almost fifteen years later, in 1560) (Olmos 2002).
His Siete sermones principales sobre los siete pecados mortales (Seven
Principal Sermons about the Seven Deadly Sins), also written in Nahuatl
and finished around 1552, shares a more intimate relationship with the
subject of the Last Judgment. According to religious scholars, these ser-
mons constitute the translation, adaptation, and application of the Ser-
mons of Saint Vicente Ferrer (1350–1419) to a new reality. Ferrer was
a Dominican who graduated from the studium arabicum et hebraicum at
Valencia and soon after became an illustrious preacher among Jews and
Arabs, to the point that he successfully converted the rabbi of Valladolid,
who would later become bishop of Burgos (Olmos, Tratado de hechicerías
y sortilegios xv). Olmos found in Ferrer a model that he could perfectly
implement in New Spain’s prevailing (and pressing) situation, where, in-
stead of Jews and Muslims, the Franciscan found another complex culture
that, just like those of the Iberian Peninsula, maintained highly developed
religious traditions that had not completely ceased to exist after the conquest
of its territory. When Olmos embarked on his own crusade against this so-
called witchcraft and sorcery, he found himself face to face with Middle-
American “demons,” such as the fearsome “Huichilobos” (Huitzilopochtli)
and his “sinister” collaborators, known in Nahuatl as tlacatecolotl (owl-men),
a word that, throughout his Tratado, Olmos freely exchanges with the most
common European names for the devil: Satan, demon, Beelzebub, and
so on.8
130 · Chapter 4
In a nutshell, whenever he appears in Mexico, the devil is a pre-Hispanic,

Indian character. Therefore, he always appears as a member of the native
pre- Columbian nobility and is dressed with the suitable attire, as depicted
in the codices, with the finery and apparel used prior to the arrival of the
Spaniards, and he demands the worship, rites, and offerings that the con-
quistadors had eradicated (Olmos, Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios xxvi).
Clearly, if the Mesoamerican “diabolical” confederation is made up of
what the Spaniards considered exotic (and disagreeable) creatures with
strange names, there is reason to suppose that from the Christian perspec-
tive of the missionaries the Indians lived in a state of sin because they
adored their ancient deities. This concept may be directly observed in the
open chapel at Actopan’s Augustinian monastery, which houses a program
of mural paintings that represent the Last Judgment, with a syncretic
“staging” that conjures up—through its infernal images—precisely the
Indo-Hispanic world (and afterworld) that Olmos details in his Tratado de
hechicerías y sortilegios. This is a work, together with his Auto del juicio fi-
nal, that perhaps inspired the terrifying images of eternal damnation ex-
emplified in the pictorial discourse of this exceptional construction.
Until now, there have been few studies of New Spain’s first dramatic
per for mance; section 35 of Fernando Horcasitas’s El Teatro náhuatl:
Épocas novohispana y moderna (Nahuatl Theater: New Spain and the
Modern Era) is by far the most systematic and definitive work.9 Therefore,
this section is much indebted to his observations and commentary. Ac-
cording to Horcasitas, the first scholar to discover and comment on the
manuscript of this dramatic piece was the American philologist John H.
Cornyn, who was active in the first half of the twentieth century. Attempt-
ing to prove the original date it was written and the Nahua influence to be
found in the work, Cornyn points to the play’s perfect meter, gentle versi-
fication, and predilection for long, compound, and agglutinative words;
according to him, these are all elements of an authentically pre-Hispanic
piece. He concludes that these elements are not easily found in Nahua
theater after the sixteenth century, since by that time the Mexica nobility
had disappeared from the scene as the governing class, and their courtly
language had gradually ceased to exist. It should be pointed out that by
then the Spanish missionaries had adapted themselves to the language of
the masses and taught them in their native tongue (Horcasitas, El Teatro
náhuatl: Épocas novohispana y moderna 566).
As Horcasitas points out, due to a style that does not resemble that of
the “pre- Columbian courtly poets,” this work certainly belongs to the six-
teenth century, because the enjambment, the repetitions—such as ma
xichocaca, ma xiquilnamiquican (that you cry, that you remember); xiqui-

macicican, ximacamiquican (that you fear, that you are frightened)—
suggest a time prior to 1678, the date of the manuscript under scrutiny (567).
Ángel María Garibay was another early scholar who tackled the diffi-
cult task of identifying and dating this piece. The difficulty to do so arises
from the fact that those contemporary chroniclers who do mention the
piece are not always in agreement about the time in which it was written,
and few of them mention the author’s name. Additionally, in the second
volume of his Historia de la literatura náhuatl (History of Nahuatl Litera-
ture), Garibay points out that, not surprisingly, several plays seem to share
the title El Juicio Universal (The Universal Judgment). The first reference to
this play (or one with an analogous subject matter) was compiled by Ber-
nardino de Sahagún in the Florentine Codex (Códice Florentino) in which
it appears almost by chance, for his reckoning of the most important fig-
ures in the history of the kingdom of Tlatelolco includes a reference to
something marvelous:
Don Iuan quauiconoc, ic naui taltocat in tlatilulco chicoxihuitl iuan

icoac tlatocati don pablo xochiquen in tenochtitla, in muchiuh tlatilulco
uei tlamauizolli uei nexcuitilli inic tlamiz cemanauac. (Sahagún, Flo-
rentine Codex 8)
Don Juan Cuahuiconoc was the fourth ruler of Tlatelolco. [He ruled]
for seven years. And when Don Pablo Xochiquen ruled in Tenochtit-
lan a wonderful thing was made in Tlatelolco, a [theatrical] per for-
mance about how the world would end. (quoted in Horcasitas, El
Teatro náhuatl 562)
A century later, the same information was included in the annals of the
Indian chronicler Chimalpahin, who dates the play two years later, in the
year Two House (1533):
Auh za no ycuac ynin mochiuh y neyxcuitilli yn ompa Santiago Tlatilulco

Mexico yehuatl ca ynic tlamiz cemanahuatl; ce[n] ca quimahuizoque yn
mizahuique yn Mexica. (Chimalpahin, Relaciones originales de Chalco
Amaquemecan 1965, 228)
And a theatrical per formance was also carried out there at Santiago
Tlatelolco in Mexico about the end of the world; the Mexicans were
most amazed and frightened. (quoted in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl
562)
132 · Chapter 4
Bartolomé de las Casas also comments that more than eight hundred
Indians participated in the performance of a “universal judgment.” Never-
theless, Horcasitas notes that it is not easy to determine if the Dominican
friar is referring to the same play mentioned by the informants of Chi-
malpahin and Sahagún, this because he places its representation in Mex-
ico City and not Tlatelolco, which at the time was an entirely different
city, removed from New Spain’s capital (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl
562). The Dominican friar does emphasize the exceptional number of
apocalyptic theatrical performances staged during the first years after the
fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan:
Another among the many performances that the Mexicans staged in

Mexico City about the universal judgment that never had anyone seen
such an admirable work made by men, and it will remain in the mem-
ory of its audience for many years. It included so many remarkable and
admirable things that there would not be enough paper nor words to
praise it, and at this time I remember that eight hundred Indians par-
ticipated in one of them, and each one had his trade and played his part
and said his lines and did and performed what he had to and no one
hindered anyone else; and finally it was said that if it had been per-
formed in Rome, it would have been much talked-about in the world.
(quoted in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 562)
The first chronicler who provides the name of the author of this foun-
dational missionary play is Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta. He praises his
coreligionist Andrés de Olmos and mentions the Nahuatl composition
about “the last judgment,” which Olmos not only wrote but also directed
and staged before the most important ecclesiastic and civilian authorities of
the period. Owing to this documentation, Olmos is considered one of New
Spain’s first—if not the first—friar playwrights. According to Mendienta,
the diligent Franciscan
wrote a play about the Last Judgment in the Mexican language, which
he had performed with great solemnity in Mexico City, in the presence
of the Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza and the saintly Archbishop
Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, and of countless persons who attended
from all over that region, and it encouraged both Indians and Spaniards
to give in to virtue and stop living a dissolute life, and many dissolute
women, moved by fear and remorse, converted to God. In order to pre-
pare the natives’ base reason, he also wrote, in the same language, the
dialogues that the Mexican elders and lords sustained with their chil-
dren and vassals, and many other books and treatises. (quoted in Horca-
sitas, El Teatro náhuatl 562– 63)
This important assertion clearly references the way in which the friars
adapted the aforementioned dialogues of pre-Hispanic times by inserting
them into the Christian context of New Spain’s evangelization. This was
certainly done in order to better reach their Indian congregations, mainly
because it was easy to assimilate these discourses into the Christian dogma,
which, throughout its history, had used and developed sermons with the
same purpose.
From this it may be gathered that the friars (particularly Olmos) not
only dwelled on what was considered most “vile and revolting” about the
target culture but also appropriated examples of virtue and civility that
they could recast within a new political and religious context.10
Likewise, the Franciscan monk documents another example of syncre-
tism in New Spain, in this case a rhetorical—and perhaps theological—
example that constitutes a new combination of discourses and dialogues
surely similar to the “huehuetlatolli” that was subsequently compiled by
Sahagún in his Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España with the
sermons traditionally presented by the Church to encourage people to be-
have well. A clear example of such an ideological amalgamation may be
found in the aforementioned work by Olmos, written in Nahuatl and en-
titled Los siete sermones principales sobre los siete pecados mortales. This
created a hybrid discourse whose purpose, like that of missionary theater
and mural painting, had a particular aim: the spiritual conquest of the
Mexican Indians. Upon considering the years in which both Olmos and
Zumárraga were involved in proselytizing the Mexican natives, Horcasitas
concludes that “El juicio final, a play by Fray Andrés de Olmos, was staged
more than once in Tlatelolco and Mexico (respectively), during the fourth
decade of the sixteenth century. It is the oldest play written in Nahuatl,
based on a European theme, that we are aware of” (El Teatro náhuatl 563–
64). As a final note to his study of the versions and possible dates in which
the Auto del juicio final was staged, Horcasitas cites bibliographer Joaquín
García Icazbalceta, who documents a Cancionero espiritual (Spiritual
Song Book), dated 1546, “containing very beneficial and edifying works:
particularly some most devotional verses in praise of Our Lord Jesus Christ
and the Most Holy Virgin Mary, His mother, with a play entitled the last
judgment” (quoted in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 564). While García
Icazbalceta expresses his doubts regarding the veracity of this publication,
134 · Chapter 4
Spanish philologist Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo maintains that “it has all
the appearance of being a joke perpetrated by some mischievous philolo-
gist, in order to play a trick on his colleagues with the marvelous news of a
186 page Mexican song book” (ibid.). With regard to the original manu-
script of this work and its whereabouts, Horcasitas says that a copy of the
dramatic piece, the only one that has survived to the present, may be
found in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and that it is twenty-
one pages long and dated 1678, although the scholar believes that this is
the date only of the preserved copy.11 It is entitled Nexcuitilmachiotl mo-
tenehua Juicio Final (The Exemplum Known as The Last Judgment). The
origin of this bilingual title is difficult to explain, since the body of the
manuscript includes what appears to be the original title of the play: In
tetlazontequililiz ilhuitl (The Last Day to Judge the People) (Horcasitas, El
Teatro náhuatl 564).
Eighteen characterizations—both dramatic characters and allegorical
figures representing concepts—appear in Olmos’s Auto del juicio final,
and they appear on stage in the following order: Saint Michael, Penance,
Time, the Holy Church, Death, Lucía, a Priest, the Antichrist, the first
Living Person, Christ, the first Angel, second Angel, the first Dead Person,
second Dead Person, third Dead Person, the first Demon, second Demon
(Satan), and the Damned. As Horcasitas points out, these are the only
characters with spoken lines, since the total number of actors was surely
higher, although if this is the same play documented by Mendieta it would
be rather difficult to believe that—as Las Casas calculated—eight hundred
individuals were involved (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 564). As for the
characters, the fact that they are stereotypes is remarkable, many of them
being “personifications of ideas or abstract qualities” that lack equivalents
in Nahuatl theater, nor can they be considered entirely medieval:
These characters, like those that appear in early Franciscan plays, are
simple stereotypes, their personalities developed from a single element.
[ . . . ] It would not be until the eighteenth century that characters with
greater depth would appear, capable of a certain degree of psychologi-
cal development. [ . . . ] The personification of abstract ideas or quali-
ties that we may find in El auto del juicio final (Death, Time, etc.) is not
a common element in Nahuatl theater, at least in those works that have
survived until the present day. Although such personifications may sug-
gest late medieval drama, it should be recalled that they remained quite
popular in Eucharistic plays in Calderón’s time (1600–1681). (Horcasi-
tas, El Teatro náhuatl 564– 65)
To complement the unabridged play included as an appendix to this

book, I provide a synopsis of Auto del juicio final presented by Horcasitas:
As the title indicates, this play deals with the end of the world and the
judgment of the living and the dead. The first two scenes take place in
an undetermined place before the last day. Saint Michael, Penance,
Time, the Holy Church, and Death exhort humanity to lead a moral
life and they announce that the end of the world is at hand. In the third
scene, the sinner Lucía decides to confess, but before she can finish, the
world’s end is announced. In the following scene, the Antichrist at-
tempts to seduce humanity, but it fails to convince the good folk. The
fifth and sixth scenes take place in Heaven. Christ orders Saint Michael
to get ready for the Last Judgment; Saint Michael plays the trumpet and
the dead come back to life. The seventh scene features a brief appear-
ance by the Antichrist. Humanity is judged in the following two scenes
and Lucía is condemned to Hell. In the last scene, a Priest appears be-
fore the audience and exhorts them to always be ready for judgment.
(Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 565)
Although this essentially didactic play lacks modern dramatic features,

the incorporation of the character of Lucía, the only one with a proper name,
is essential because this converted, yet sinful, Indian woman displays all the
characteristics that transform her into the first dramatis personae in Indo-
Christian theater. It is not surprising that the main character in this short
play is a woman, for in the section entitled “Porqué destos ministros del
demonio ay más mugeres que hombres” (“Why There Are More Women
than Men among These Ministers of the Devil”), found in his treatise on
witchcraft, Olmos warns that:
many women live as impostors. Because they did not come into the
world close to Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacraments, they did
not fulfill their obligation; therefore they will give themselves up to the
ser vice of the Devil, and will give themselves in to the practice of a sin
known as execrementa. (Olmos, Auto del juicio final 47)
Although Lucía is not presented as a witch, she is an unrepentant woman

whose terrible punishment becomes even more extraordinary when it is
discovered that her true origins are to be found in the pre-Hispanic (under)
world where Olmos typically uncovered the vilest and most disgusting
Mesoamerican phenomena. As will be seen, although it is uncertain that
136 · Chapter 4
Lucía is concomitantly the first personification of an Indian deity incor-

porated into a European play, she may no longer be considered a stock
character or “the personification of abstract characteristics or ideas” (Hor-
casitas, El Teatro náhuatl 564) without taking into account that said char-
acteristics have their origin in a pre- Columbian sacred context. This will
be demonstrated in the following section, where it will become apparent
that Lucía closely resembles the figure appearing in three segments of the
pictorial program located on the interior walls of Actopan’s open chapel.
The few scholars who have analyzed the mural painting program at
Actopan have identified this female portrait as the “serpent woman,”
because, like Lucía, she wears a collar in the shape of a coatl (or serpent),
a feature that supports her identification as the pre-Hispanic goddess
Cihuacoatl (figure 7, p. 24). Within a similar context and in order to ex-
plain this extraordinary syncretism, Bernardino de Sahagún’s informants
provided detailed information that the friar employed to establish a par-
allelism between Cihuacoatl and Eve; this phenomenon also explains
popular theories about the existence of Christianity among the Ameri-
can Indians prior to the conquest, notions that were surely set forth in
Olmos’s lost work:
They said that this goddess caused adverse things, such as poverty, de-
jection, toil; they said that she usually appeared as a woman dressed in
finery like that used in palaces. They said that at night she cried and
howled in the wind; that goddess is called Cihuacoatl, which means
woman of the snake; and they also called her Tonantzin, which means
our mother. From these two things, it seems that this goddess is our
mother Eve, who was deceived by the serpent, and that they knew about
the matter that took place between our mother Eve and the serpent.
(Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España 33)
I shall return to this pre-Hispanic deity while undertaking a careful analy-

sis of the figure portrayed in three respective fragments included in the
mural cycle painted on the interior walls of the open chapel at Actopan.
Some scholars have identified her as the mother-goddess Cihuacoatl, who
Sahagún sees as a Nahua version of the Judeo- Christian Eve. Nevertheless,
this interpretation fails to explain why Eve would be found in the under-
world. It is probably more reasonable to relate her exclusively to Cihua-
coatl, and thus consider her not as an American Eve but strictly as a pagan
goddess. This interpretation will be achieved through an iconographic
analysis, aided by Olmos’s text. His literary representation depicts the serpent-
woman, damned to spend eternity in Hell; yet we see she is preserved in-
side the open chapel at Actopan, Hidalgo.12
With regard to the actual staging of Olmos’s play, a point of fundamen-
tal interest if one is to establish its relationship to Actopan’s cycle of mural
paintings is that:
If we follow the instructions included with the text [of the play], we may
be led to believe that a tripartite stage was employed consisting of
Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Christ and Saint Michael are in Heaven, as
well as the chosen ones (at the end of the play); Lucía, her confessor, the
Antichrist, and the living and the dead are located on Earth, while the
demons, as well as Lucía and the other damned (at the end of the play)
are found in Hell. The stage might even have been divided into three
superimposed floors if we take into account the “goes down” and “goes
up” employed with reference to the characters. In this case, they might
have gone up and down through a series of stairs. (Horcasitas, El Teatro
náhuatl 565– 66)
These same “stage directions” are graphically represented through the

pictorial composition of the sections in which Actopan’s open chapel is
divided, thus illustrating a structural similarity that allows for its com-
parison to Andrés de Olmos’s play, if it is not, in fact, based directly on it.
Although there is not much evidence regarding its design or use, the dan-
ger presented by this type of multileveled construction was documented
by Commissary General Fray Alonso Ponce during his visit to Oaxaca in
1586. In his Relación breve y verdadera de algunas cosas de las muchas que
sucedieron al Padre F. Alonzo Ponce en las Provincias de la Nueva España,
siendo Comisario General de aquellas tierras, escrita por religiosos sus com-
pañeros (Brief and True Account of Some of the Many Things that Hap-
pened to Father F. Alonzo Ponce in the Provinces of New Spain, When He
Was Commissioner General of Those Lands, Written by His Fellow Friars),
he mentions an accident that took place at the Dominican monastery in
the town of Etla, Oaxaca:
During the celebration of the Feast of the Most Holy Sacrament, some
performances and plays were staged, and so many people occupied a
walkway right next to the monastery itself, that the corridor collapsed,
and a friar was killed, along with many Indians, causing a great shame
in all the land. (quoted in Arróniz, Teatro de evangelización en Nueva
España 128)
138 · Chapter 4
Horcasitas is led to accept the early date of the Auto del juicio final (1531–
1533) and the consequent authenticity of the manuscript based on the ref-
erences to the “economic, social and religious crisis experienced by both
conquered and conquerors during the distressing first fifteen years of
New Spain’s existence” (El Teatro náhuatl 566), that is, the same reality
that inspired the apocalyptic images painted at Actopan over twenty years
later. In the first chapter of his chronicle, Friar Toribio de Benavente (Mo-
tolinia) enumerates, with due apocalyptic solemnity, the ten plagues that
assailed New Spain as a consequence of the Spaniards’ arrival, including
previously unknown diseases and the consequent death of thousands of
Indians from smallpox; the deaths that occurred as a result of the conquest
of New Spain; the subsequent famine, because the Indians were not able to
plant the fields; and the building of Mexico City over the ruins of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan, among other disasters that devastated the recently con-
quered lands (Motolinia, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España 13–17).
Regarding this matter, Horcasitas points out that it is not surprising that
the Auto del juicio final had been staged, according to various sources, be-
tween 1531 and 1533, and that, according to other chronicles, Archbishop
Zumárraga and Viceroy Mendoza, absolute representatives of Spanish
power, had been the foremost guests at the performance. Horcasitas also
speculates that one should not dismiss the possibility that Motolinia him-
self could have participated in the preparation of the play (El Teatro náhuatl
566). With regard to the context of the analogous mural painting, Elena
Estrada de Gerlero suggests that the apocalyptic perspective that helped
justify the terrible deaths of converted souls among the Indian population
had two main traits:
By that period, the Indian population had been disastrously diminished

by the pale horseman, the Plague. However, this event does not seem
to occur simultaneously with the highest peak of the construction of
monasteries, but rather with the time in which the pictorial programs
were carried out. By that time, the certainty of the apocalyptic omens
was reinforced by a series of awful epidemics. Some considered them
as a punishment for the Indians’ sins, but others considered them to be
the punishment for the excesses committed by the Spaniards against the
natives. (“Los temas escatológicos en la pintura mural novohispana del
siglo XVI” 87)
As for the biblical sources upon which the play is based, Horcasitas
informs us that “the subject is based on the Gospels that are read on Whit-
sunday (Luke 21: 25–33) and on the first Sunday of Advent (Matthew 25:
31– 46)” (El Teatro náhuatl 567). The latter reads as follows:
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels
with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him
shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from an-
other, as a shepherd divideth [his] sheep from the goats: And he shall set
the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the
King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.13
(Spanish version quoted in Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl 567)
Horcasitas considers that this play was probably performed in connec-

tion to the Mass said during one of these two aforementioned Sundays (El
Teatro náhuatl 567). Based on the investigations carried out by Phillis
Hartnoll, editor of The Oxford Companion to the Theater, the expert in
Nahuatl culture outlines this play’s most likely antecedents, likewise relat-
ing them to the plague that punished Europe throughout the Middle
Ages. Although he points out that there is no Spanish antecedent directly
related to the Nahuatl Auto del juicio final, it was a popular subject during
the Middle Ages (both in literature and sculpture), and it seems to have
spread mostly during the sixteenth century, due to the loss of lives caused
by a plague epidemic (ibid.). Horcasitas has located a very old example of
this subject matter, also inspired by historical accounts: the German mys-
tery play Antichristus, dating to the second half of the twelfth century:
“Well planned, conceived with great dramatic quality, it required a great
number of actors and was probably staged within the nave of some spacious
church” (ibid.).
Despite the valuable contributions of his work, Horcasitas does not ana-
lyze the play itself, treating it more like a historical document than a work
of dramatic fiction. However, when the text of the Auto del juicio final is
studied from the literary perspective, some peculiarities—particularly
those of a discursive and lexical nature—become apparent. From the fifth
scene of the play onward, after God exhorts the dead to rise from their
graves, some references to essentially pre-Hispanic ideas and objects are
to be found that—once incorporated into the Middle Age’s apocalyptic
discourse—endow this piece with its surprising originality:
Come, my war chief, come to Heaven. I am now going to end, to destroy

time. It’s called the Last Judgment, the Day of Judgment, as I established
140 · Chapter 4
in my divine orders. I’m going to sweep, to clean Heaven and Earth,

which the inhabitants of the world, both living and dead, have stained
with their bad conduct.
Awake, oh living and dead, good and evil! To the righteous ones I
shall give a splendid share in Paradise, full of flowers, the celestial jade,
and the heavenly palm tree of the river. And the wicked ones shall re-
ceive the house of death and the afflictions of hell because they have
not followed my divine orders. (p. 166, this volume)
Although the invocation of the “chief warrior” is a clear reference to the

archangel Saint Michael, it is also reminiscent of the Nahua invocations
compiled by Sahagún, as are the divisions of warriors into the well-known
categories (eagle, jaguar, and ocelot) of ancient Mexico. In fact, the war-
riors that appear within the mural programs at Itzmiquilpan belong to
these same pre-Hispanic orders, for as will be recalled the monastery at
Itzmiquilpan was dedicated to the archangel San Miguel. Given the other
examples of syncretism that have been discussed up to this point, these
earthly (pagan) warriors have likely been transformed into celestial (Chris-
tian) warriors, having joined Saint Michael’s Christian army, at the mo-
ment when the Archangel makes his apocalyptic appearance, leading the
angels of Good in their fight against the rebellious army led by Lucifer.
In preparation for the imminent Last Judgment, the Savior proclaims
that He will “sweep, to clean Heaven and Earth” (p. 166, this volume).
Sweeping was the foundational act of one of the most widespread pre-
Hispanic myths: the one that narrates the birth of Huitzilopochtli, the
Mexica’s “warrior chief,” now transformed into Saint Michael. In his Histo-
ria general de las cosas de la Nueva España, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún
documents the information received from his informants about Huitzilo-
pochtli and his cosmic mother:
According to what the elderly natives said and knew about the birth and
origin of the devil called Huitzilopochtli, whom the Mexicans honored
and respected very much, there is a hill called Coatepec, near the town
of Tula, and a woman called Coatlicue lived there; she was the mother
of a group of Indians who called themselves Centzonhuitznahua, and
they had a sister called Coyoxauhqui; and that the said Coatlicue did
penance, sweeping the hill of Coatepec every day, and that one day,
while she was sweeping, a small ball of feathers, resembling a ball of
yarn, descended upon her and she took it and placed it in her bosom
near her belly, under her petticoats, and after she had finished sweep-
ing, she wanted to take it, but did not find it, and they said she became
pregnant of it. (191)
Returning to Olmos’s play, at the end of His exordium, God promises

the faithful that they will reach Paradise and warns the sinners that they
will suffer Hell’s awful torments. As previously indicated, the good will be
rewarded with “a splendid portion, full of flowers, the celestial jade, the
heavenly palm tree of the river.” This phrase presents a magnificent corol-
lary built on the basis of two of the most venerable symbols and ideals of
European and pre-Hispanic culture. As is well known, the palm tree was a
symbol of eternal life and Resurrection for the Christians, while jade not
only possessed a significant material value for the ancient Mexicans, but
it was also highly regarded because its color was the same as the plumes
of Quetzalcoatl, one of the most relevant Nahua deities, as well as a
favorite metaphor among Nahua poets. For example, Netzahualcoyotl
praises his son by stating that “[He] is pure jade.” In the eleventh book of
his encyclopedic work entitled “De las propiedades de los animals, aves,
peces, árboles, híerbas, flores, metales y piedras, y de los colores (“Of the
Properties of Animals, Birds, Fish, Trees, Herbs, Flowers, Metals, and
Stones, and Colours”), Sahagún notes that among the Nahua jade was
much esteemed and also a symbol of nobility: “There are other stones,
which they call chalchihuites; they are green and opaque, mixed with white;
the chiefs use them frequently, wrapped around their wrists, tying them
with a string, and it is a sign that the person who wears it is a noble; it was
not legal for maceguales (commoners) to wear it” (Sahagún, Historia gen-
eral de las cosas de la Nueva España 693). Jade also represented Chalchi-
uhtlicue, goddess of water, and, according to Sahagún’s informants, “they
painted her as a woman, and they said that she was sister of the rain gods
called Tlaloques” (Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Es-
paña, 35). Among other elements, Chalchiuhtlicue’s representation was
characterized by “her painted face. Her necklace of fine green stones. Her
paper hat with a quetzal feather crest” (Sahagún, Historia general de las
cosas de la Nueva España 888).
In scene 8 of the The Last Judgment, once God has separated the just
from the sinners, the devout from the unrepentant, He calls the demons
from Hell to carry off Lucía, an Indian woman guilty of bigamy. God calls
out: “Come, oh, inhabitants of Avernus! Take these slaves of yours to the
depths of Hell. And this unfortunate woman, throw her into a fire temazcal,
and torment her there” (p. 172, this volume). To employ the name of a
pre-Hispanic bath (temazcal) as an instrument of torture is a clear case of
142 · Chapter 4
substitution belonging to Stage One (1519– ca. 1550), as established by

James Lockhart. In this case the pattern has been curiously reversed, since
the Spanish were the ones who adopted the Nahuatl term. The fact that
Olmos permitted the use of the term temazcal or temazcalli (bathhouse) in
his work, something the Nahua considered “the flower of our lord which
we call temazcalli” (Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Es-
paña 377), suggests that he (along with many other Spaniards) had a fun-
damental desire to modify the natives’ spiritual and cultural values. This
mission is not surprising, given that the principal Mexican gods had been
suddenly transformed into satraps, devils, and demons. However loyal to
his anthropological efforts, Sahagún documents the beneficial proper-
ties of the pre-Hispanic ritual that involves the use of the temazcal:
The inhabitants of this land use the baths for many things, and if the
sick persons are to take full advantage of it, the bath, which they call
temazcalli, must be very well heated, and it must be warmed with good
firewood that does not produce smoke; it is beneficial, in the first place,
for those who are recovering from certain diseases, so they may heal
more quickly [ . . . ] anyone who is sick is benefited by these baths. (His-
toria general de las cosas de la Nueva España 688)
Since many of their daily objects were loaded with religious symbolism,
the Nahuas, also venerated the image of the goddess Temazcalteci as well
as Cihuacoatl and Tonatzin, both pre-Hispanic Mother Goddesses. In the
first book of his History, entitled “En que se trata de los dioses que adoran
los naturales de esta tierra que es la Nueva España” (“In Which the Gods
Worshipped by the Natives of This Land that Is New Spain Are De-
scribed”), Sahagún refers to “a goddess that is called the mother of the
gods, heart of the land, and our grandmother. [ . . . ] And they all placed
the image of this goddess in the baths and they called her Temazcalteci,
which means the grandmother of the baths” (Historia general de las co-
sas de la Nueva España 33). The use of this pre-Hispanic practice to repre-
sent the torments of Hell clearly demonstrates an attempt to instill the
Christian faith by using elements that the Nahuas recognized as belong-
ing to their own culture, and for which the Spanish language did not
have an exact term or an equivalent. Olmos himself could have created
this disconcerting image, but this possibility would not refute the ma-
nipulation of said words and concepts within the context of different re-
alities, that is, their consequent symbolic distortion by the monks in charge
of evangelization.
As soon as the group of demons appears on the stage, one demon or-
ders his assistant to bring the implements of torture and, not surprisingly,
some of them are identical to those skillfully portrayed in several sections
of the mural program painted on the interior walls of Actopan’s open cha-
pel (figure 27):
Bring the blazing metal rope and the burning metal staff so we can flog
them. And tell our lord Lucifer that we are bringing his slaves to him, so
he can immediately send the burning metal thorns to the place where
we are taking his slaves. (p. 172, this volume)
Scene 9 begins with a series of references that may only be interpreted

as stage directions, in which the playwright describes Lucía’s torments:
Flutes will sound. The angels, Jesus Christ, and the just will rise. Lucía
will then be taken out this way. She will wear fire butterflies for ear-
rings and a serpent for a necklace. She will be tied by the waist. She
will come screaming and the demons will respond to her. (p. 173, this
volume)
Figure 27. San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. Detail of the instruments
of torture represented in the mural cycle of the open chapel at Actopan. (Photo by
Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
144 · Chapter 4
The description of her earrings (“fire butterflies”) and her necklace (“a
serpent”) immediately recalls the pre-Hispanic tradition, here used to set
this woman apart as a member of the nobility, as her adornment closely
resembles that of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, according to Sahagún’s
description. Moreover, it also illustrates the inherently evil nature of her
former pagan beliefs, making reference to the sacred serpent, despised by
Christianity, but worshipped in the pre-Hispanic tradition. Meanwhile,
Lucía, broken by her torments, speaks her last (and terrifying) words:
Everything has turned to fire. Oh, it burns me whole! Fire butterflies

surround my ears and they represent the things with which I used to
adorn myself, my jewels. And here around my neck I have a fire serpent
that reminds me of the necklace I used to wear. A horrible fire serpent,
the heart of Mictlan, the infernal abode, clings to me! It reminds me
of my worldly pleasures. Oh, why didn’t I marry? Oh wretched me, it
has happened! (p. 174, this volume)
Based on this description, it may be inferred that Lucía was either a

woman of the Nahua upper class (pipiltin) or a modified representation of
the Mother Goddess Cihuacoatl-Tonantzin, or both. Her attributes—for
example, the snake—have been incorporated into the costume of this
damned soul, who will not descend to the nightmarish underworld of me-
dieval Christian tradition but to “the heart of Mictlan, the infernal
abode” (p. 174, this volume). Not surprisingly, Sahagún was also one of the
first Europeans to establish the implicit relationship between Mictlan and
the Hell of Christian tradition, and in his encyclopedic work documented
the three places to where the soul of the deceased person was bound,
which generally resembled Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise:
What the native elders and lords of this land said and knew about those
who passed away was that the souls of the deceased went to one of three
places: one was Hell, where the devil called Mictlantecutli was found and
lived, he was also known as Tzontemoc, and a goddess called Mictecaci-
huatl, who was the wife of Mictlantecutli; and the souls of those who
died from disease, whether they were lords or principals or members of
the lower classes, they went to Hell, and on the day that one of them died,
whether male, female, or a young person, they said [ . . . ] you have
gone to the dark place without light, without windows, and you will
never return from there nor shall you care and ask any more for your
return. (Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España 205)
As I hope to demonstrate in the following section, Lucía, the tormented

soul and Indian deity, is directly related to the pre-Hispanic goddess
Cihuacoatl-Tonantzin and matches the image painted by a group of itiner-
ant tlacuilos on the lunette of Actopan’s impressive open chapel who in
all probability followed the orders of a friar who was an expert in biblical
representation, most likely Andrés de Mata himself.14
The Mural Cycle at San Nicolás Actopan
The monastic complex of San Nicolás in Actopan has been analyzed from
different perspectives by more than a few scholars, from colonial times to
the present day. The culmination of these historiographical studies is
embodied by the publication, in 1955, of the monograph Actopan, written
by Luis MacGregor, a product of his involvement in the restoration of this
fortress-monastery, located in the state of Hidalgo, a short distance from the
monastery of San Miguel Itzmiquilpan.15 Studies by Manuel Toussaint,
George Kubler, and Diego Angulo Íñiguez also provide significant data
that facilitate a detailed analysis of this monastery, though the paintings
on the interior walls of the open chapel were concealed beneath a thick
layer of lime for centuries and were discovered only in 1977 by architect
Juan Benito Artigas Hernández. In this mural cycle, Constantino Reyes-
Valerio, author of the important study Arte indocristiano (Indo- Christian
Art), finds “a summary of the history of man’s fate, in the light of Chris-
tian teaching” (116); he notes that “the friar who directed this work sum-
marized, through his parish painters, everything he wanted the Indians
to learn through a few pictures” (ibid.). Although there are no documents
to prove it, Andrés de Mata, owing to his extensive knowledge of the In-
dian world, might have been “the friar who directed this work.” As Reyes-
Valerio points out, in this program “scenes in which an Indian pays homage
to his deities, as well as the punishment that awaits him if he persists, may
be observed in the scenes of Hell [included in Actopan’s mural paintings],
where a variety of demons punish men and women” (116) (figure 28).
In personal communication, Elena Isabel Estrada de Gerlero insists
that the Spanish Crown’s officialist severity during the reigns of Charles
III and Charles IV, and the continuation of that policy during the first
decades after the independence of Mexico, is the most reasonable expla-
nation as to why these murals were at some unknown point covered with
whitewash. One must also consider the late sixteenth- century ecclesiasti-
cal mind-set stemming from the Council of Trent; its guidelines, despite
146 · Chapter 4
Figure 28. San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. Detail of the mural in
Actopan’s open chapel: an Indian worshipping his ancient gods before a pyramid.
(Photo by Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
their delayed arrival to New Spain, were nevertheless applied with full se-
verity in the colonies. Among the abundant possibilities that may explain
the early concealment of the images at Actopan is that the Third Mexican
Council was held in 1585, and that the provisions inspired by the Twenty-
Fifth Session of the Council of Trent, during which the Sacred Images
were discussed, are particularly germane to this matter. The outcome of
that session included, for example, a prohibition against naked human fig-
ures and the absolute condemnation of any reference to obscene or profane
elements within the artistic composition. All painters—whether Indian
or Spanish—were obliged to obey these proclamations. More important,
“inspectors” were given orders to “have those images representing apoc-
ryphal stories or indecent sculptures or paintings to be erased or removed”
(Estrada de Gerlero, “Los temas” 87).
The iconographic program that covers the interior walls of this monas-
tery’s open chapel includes diverse scenes inspired by the milleniarist
prophecy of the Last Judgment, as well as images similar to those found
in the mural paintings that have been preserved in other Augustinian
centers, particularly at Santa María Xoxoteco and San Miguel Itzmiquilpan.
The pictorial scenes at Actopan, housed in the space provided by its adjacent
open chapel have been compared to literary and ecclesiastical works as

diverse as Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica Christi-
ana, and several fifteenth-century illustrated books, including the Nuremberg
Chronicle.
Apocalyptic themes constituted a response to the great uncertainty and
generalized terror that prevailed after the enormous loss of lives among
the recently converted Indian population, decimated by plagues during
the first decades of colonization. To better understand why images belong-
ing to the Indian pictographic tradition were incorporated into this and
other apocalyptic mural paintings of the time, it must be taken into ac-
count that, besides the fact that the majority of the artists were tlacuilos,
according to Sahagún’s informants, most of the Indians who died of such
diseases went straight into Mictlan, the Nahuatl equivalent of the Chris-
tian Hell (Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España
205). Estrada de Gerlero demonstrates that the subjects of many mid- and
late sixteenth- century Mexican iconographic programs expressed the re-
action of a society that had been affected at almost every level by the re-
lentless epidemics, although they had a far more detrimental effect on
the Indian population, which lacked any kind of natural defenses against
the recently introduced diseases. Estrada de Gerlero studied Gerónimo
de Mendieta’s accounts of New Spain’s plagues and managed to establish
an important relationship between the epidemics of the European Middle
Ages and the plagues that afflicted the natives of New Spain a few centu-
ries later and, in turn, how those plagues were reflected in New Spain’s
mural paintings, a matter that Fernando Horcasitas had previously com-
mented on in his analysis of the Auto del juicio final. Estrada de Gerlero
adduces that:
It is generally accepted that subject matters related to memento mori,

such as the danse macabre, apocalyptical scenes, and popular mystery
plays were not particularly common in medieval Europe during times
of peace and prosperity. [ . . . ] However, they took a great hold during
times of danger and despair: they were hugely popular during the Black
Death and the Hundred Years War. How did they reappear here, in
New Spain, with such vitality, during the sixteenth century? There were
seven apocalyptic epidemics in this land, and, according to Friar
Gerónimo de Mendieta, the 1576 epidemic was particularly virulent,
especially among the Indian population: nearly two million Indians
were decimated, while there was minimal devastation among Spaniards
and Africans. Religious hospitals—although they indeed helped to
148 · Chapter 4
relieve the suffering of the Indians—were insufficient; the monasteries’

atriums and porticoes served as additional hospital wings, and diseased
persons seeking physical and spiritual remedy in the monks’ protection
poured into them. (“Los temas” 86– 87)
It was precisely due to the awful reality of this deadly epidemic that the
Indians embraced an eschatological theology promoted by Franciscans
and Augustinians, that is, the same milleniarist movement headed by
Joachim of Fiore that was discussed in the first section of this chapter and
that was resurrected at this difficult period of the early Indo- Christian
world. Within this panorama of disease and death, it would have been logi-
cal that the prospect of the natives’—celestial or infernal—destiny would
quickly become the subject matter of many of the period’s iconographic
expressions, particularly if one takes into account that fate in the pre-
Hispanic world determined that those who died from disease were imme-
diately sent to Mictlan.
As has been suggested with regard to Actopan’s iconographic program,
the most outstanding scenes of this particular mural cycle are to be found
in the three sections representing a feminine figure who is apparently be-
ing strangled by a snake, and who evokes the character of Lucía in the Auto
del juicio final. We have seen that this converted sinner—baptized with the
Christian name Lucía, probably due to its similarity to that of Lucifer—
embodies the first true dramatic character with universal psychological
features to appear in Mexico and whose tragic fate is reflected in the strik-
ing monologue that ends her participation in the play, as she begins her
descent into the hybrid underworld that may best be described as Indo-
Christian. Lucía is damned to eternal fire, and the Indian neophytes were
threatened with the same fate if they ignored the rules established by the
Christian faith—in other words, those who, like Lucía, committed the sin
of bigamy, or of polygamy, cannibalism, or any other held to be abomina-
ble by the new religion. Such sins, not considered such by the Nahua,
were relatively common and accepted within a religious context by the
pagans.
Just as in the text of the Auto del juicio final, in one of the surviving
scenes from Actopan’s mural painting program, Lucía is immersed in a
tub (temazcal) filled with boiling water, a scene that doubtlessly would
have caused much terror among the Indians (figure 29). Could the incor-
poration of this female character—who so closely resembles that of the
dramatic character Lucía, whom Olmos included in his play written fifty
years before these images were created—be a mere iconographic accident?
Figure 29. San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. Detail of

the female Indian character (Lucía) in one of the scenes included
in the mural painting of the open chapel at Actopan. (Photo by
Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
Given the number of documented examples regarding the transposition

of printed illustrations to the pictorial programs of New Spain’s mural
paintings this phenomenon is not surprising. For example, as will be re-
called, it was the frontispiece of Fray Alonso de Molina’s Confessionario breve
(written in Nahuatl) that served as the model for the decoration of one of
the vaults of Acolman’s Augustinian monastery, to cite only one example.
Nevertheless, Actopan’s mural program is exceptional because instead
of a transcription of a printed image into a pictorial program—as in the
150 · Chapter 4
case of the engraving taken from Molina’s text at Acolman—in Actopan

one is witness to a literary—and dramatic—description that most likely
inspired the images in its open chapel. This literary description may have
had its origin in a handwritten copy of the missionary play in question.
Examples of this kind of transposition from one art to another have been
found in Franciscan constructions, including the monastery at San Miguel
Huejotzingo, Puebla. Perhaps owing to the unique political, religious,
and social situation created by the conquest, antiquated aesthetic and
ideological concerns may be found within the mural cycles of this monas-
tery, a distinction that alludes to the development of what I have coined
“bookish architecture,” in order to describe those monastic buildings—as
well as their artistic programs—constructed at the onset of Spanish domina-
tion. An exemplary case may be found in the adornment of this monastery’s
Porziuncola, built around the middle of the sixteenth century, and based on
the literary descriptions of so-called Jerusalemite columns. Subsequently,
these “literary columns” were re-created by European engravers while their
graphic (i.e., xylographic) products were carved in stone, thus embodying a
unique form of palimpsest, born from exegesis and subsequently transformed
into icons. In his study Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano (Icono-
graphy and Iconology of New Spain’s Art), Santiago Sebastián points out:
The strange and controversial columns of the façade of Huejotzingo’s

church have no relation with the orders described in the treatises. They
are of the Jerusalemite or Tyrian order, the one used by Hiram of Tyre
in the construction of the Temple of Solomon. [ . . . ] After the disap-
pearance of the Temple of Jerusalem, the sole source for its recon-
struction was the aforementioned Biblical text, the seventh chapter of
the first Book of Kings, describing the façade with two columns known
as Jachin and Boaz, with bronze capitals, in the shape of a lily, and
which were four cubits high; there was also a chain of pomegranates,
from one column to another. (Iconografía e iconología del arte novohis-
pano 21)
Although the Franciscans were guided by the milleniarist prophecies of

medieval theologians such as Joachim de Fiore, among others, it cannot be
denied that at the level of iconographical reproduction there exists a close
link between a literary—in this case, biblical—description, its graphic re-
production, and its consequent architectural expression, which, in turn,
was filled with apocalyptic symbolism.
In her monograph dedicated to the pictorial program of the open cha-
pel at Actopan, Estrada de Gerlero establishes that the theme of the Last
Judgment, which for many years was considered to play a secondary role
with regard to other religious subject matters, was in fact one of the pre-
vailing themes of New Spain’s mural painting. As such, it is to be found
not only in open chapels but was also frequently included in the inte-
rior walls of the churches, such as those of the sacristy (for example, at
Itzmiquilpan) and the corridors surrounding the inner gardens or atriums,
a space reserved almost exclusively for the friars. Indeed, when scholars
first began to examine this vast body of iconographic representation, little
importance was given to apocalyptical themes; however, this theory was
drastically altered after a number of mural paintings that were hidden
under several layers of lime were gradually uncovered. Nevertheless, the
mute evidence provided by bas-relief sculptures, which can still be ob-
served in the processional chapel devoted to Saint Michael, part of the
monastic complex at San Andrés Calpan, Puebla, among other examples of
architectural decoration, documents an apocalyptic iconography carved
principally in stone (“Los temas” 73) (figure 1a, p. 6).
With regard to the iconographic, that is “bookish,” sources for these
apocalyptic representations, Estrada de Gerlero points out that both George
Kubler and John McAndrew had already established an intimate relation-
ship between the reliefs inscribed on the façades of Calpan’s processional
chapel and an engraving from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), which
was later included in Pedro de Vega’s Flos Sanctorum, published in Spain
in the early sixteenth century, as noted by Manuel Toussaint. Estrada de
Gerlero also relates them to some images found in the mural paintings at
Actopan and Itzmiquilpan, although
with regard to Augustinian examples, none of them represents Christ

with the sword of the divine Word of the first Theophany, which ap-
pears in both the engraving included in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as
well as at Calpan, but they share a series of common elements with
the magnificent mural paintings of the open chapels at Actopan and
Xoxoteco: demoniacal tortures, at Acolman; open tombs, in the two
minor examples at Actopan; Leviathan’s jaws, at Itzmiquilpan, Actopan,
and Cuitzeo; a green demon in the tympanum of Actopan’s gallery.
(“Los temas” 73)
Owing to the similarities shared by the images found in the aforemen-

tioned Augustinian monasteries, Estrada de Gerlero concludes that they
are the result of a concerted effort propitiated by this order to ornament
their sacred spaces with didactic elements. Moreover, they were almost
certainly created by the same previously mentioned group of itinerant
152 · Chapter 4
tlacuilos, because, except for Michoacán’s Cuitzeo, all of these Augustinian

monasteries were built in the same general geographical area (the valley of
El Mezquital) and therefore developed distinct regional characteristics
(“Los temas” 73–74).16
Striving to explain the frequent production of pictorial programs
inspired in the Last Judgment, Estrada de Gerlero emphasizes the fact
that one of the fundamental challenges—besides the marked linguistic
barrier—faced by the friars regarding their urgent need to communicate
with their new flock were the enormous differences regarding the concept
of life after death, still very much alive in pre-Hispanic beliefs, a situation
that only served to increase this cultural barrier. Subsequently, Estrada de
Gerlero associates the presence of these representations with sermons
and doctrinal lessons, because the mural paintings surely must have
served as a visual background for the instructing (and perhaps monolin-
gual) friar:
Therefore, in the open chapels at Actopan and Xoxoteco, the mural

paintings replicate the message of the sermons, the doctrine, and most
liturgical and didactic art of the evangelizing friars. A synthesis of Rev-
elations, Genesis, and the themes of the medieval religious plays were
combined here in order to show the Indian converts what their ulti-
mate end would be, including scenes of demonic temptations; and there
would have been no doubt that, if the converts succumbed to those temp-
tations, there would not be the slightest glimmer of hope about the rami-
fications. (“Los temas” 74)
The art historian elaborates without delving more deeply into the matter
on the intimate relationship these plastic expressions shared with their dra-
matic corollary, because “it is not uncommon to find in sixteenth-century
[New Spain’s] religious chronicles references to sacramental topics and
dances that illustrated Genesis or which demonstrated an eschatologi-
cal nature. The most outstanding references include: the mystery play
staged in Tlaxcala on Corpus Christi, 1528, when, next to the Francis-
can hospital, the Indians performed La caída de nuestros primeros padres
(The Fall of Our Forefathers)” (“Los temas” 74).
To provide the most detailed description of the arrangement of the
images in the open chapel at Actopan, I rely on the description made by
Estrada de Gerlero in her seminal analysis. According to it, the main
wall of Actopan’s chapel was subdivided into three areas that cover the lu-
nette created by the open chapel (figure 30). The upper section represents
Figure 30. San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. The three levels of Actopan’s
pictorial program are reminiscent of the structure of Andrés de Olmos’s play, the
Auto del juicio final. (Photo by Silvia González de León and Antonio Montes de Oca.)
the scene of the Last Judgment and combines passages from chapters 4
and 20 of John’s book of Revelations. The middle section is comprised
of two scenes: on the side of the Gospel representing “The Creation of
Woman” (Genesis 2:22), Eve emerges from Adam’s rib; as a secondary
subject, the Leviathan appears to the left, its maw open, along with some
animals with medieval features; the section on the side of the epistle sum-
marizes “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” and “Adam and Eve Ex-
pelled from Paradise” (Genesis 3:7 and 24). The lower section is divided
into four segments: on the side of the gospel, “The Toil of the Human
Being Caused by the Fall from Grace” is represented, with Adam working
the land and Eve breastfeeding Cain, both clothed in the hides that the
Lord gave them to cover their nudity (Genesis 3:16–21), along with a
scene that shows the jaws of Leviathan vomiting two of the horsemen of
the Apocalypse, those of Plague and War, that is, the “The Breaking of the
Second and the Fourth Seals” (Revelations 6, 4, 8); the following scene
depicts the Flood, with the representation of Noah’s Ark and the Church
of Christ, which is not surprising because medieval theology considered
that the Flood foretold the Last Judgment, among other biblical events; the
scenes on the side of the epistle illustrate, in order of apparition, “The
154 · Chapter 4
Breaking of the Sixth Seal,” with an earthquake and a meteor shower

(Revelations 6, 12)—this scene may be interpreted also as the “The Fall of
Babylon” (Revelations 18), alluding to the punishment of idolatry (Estrada
de Gerlero, “Los temas” 76–79).
The Mexican scholar proposes an attractive hypothesis regarding the
inclusion of the “Tower of Babel,” for, within the context of New Spain’s
evangelization its presence has a particular significance—the scene com-
bines apocalyptic omens adapted to the immediate context and seen from
the period’s milleniarist standpoint. To underline this concept, Estrada de
Gerlero poses a rhetorical question:
Could we not consider that it foreshadows the fall of Tenochtitlan?

Additionally, we must remember that Fray Toribio de Benavente
considered that the seventh plague alluded to the construction of
Mexico City upon the ruins of the Mexica Empire’s ancient capital
city. Such allegories and parallelisms based on Biblical revelations
were constantly employed in New Spain’s sermons and chronicles.
(“Los temas” 77)
In the following series of images, Estrada de Gerlero finds a subject

matter unusual in European apocalyptic representations, since those of
Actopan were inspired by Maccabees II, and consequently represent some
kind of Purgatory, a nightmarish place of provisional punishment for the
atonement of sins. She rightly acknowledges that this scene does not seem
to be based either on Genesis or Revelations, because its theme is the “Sal-
vación de las almas del purgatorio” (“Salvation of the Souls in Purgatory”),
and the sole biblical record of a place of temporary punishment after death
is found in Maccabees II: “Evidently, this is a representation of Purgatory,
because the human figures that are devoured by the sea of fire are not
in the company of demons, while angels, with the help of two spiritual
ladders, release them from their torment” (“Los temas” 77–78). Here the
historian uncovers a fundamental relationship that helps connect the the-
atrical performance of the Auto del juicio final, essentially Franciscan, to
its plastic concomitance, frequently represented both by Franciscans and
Augustinians. This theme is specified through the representation of de-
mons and other beings from the underworld in six engravings included in
Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana, because:
Six of these engravings include representations of demoniacal tortures;

in five of them, they are found in the lower sections of the composi-
tions, and they match the allegories of the “Civil Hierarchy,” the “Ec-
clesiastical Hierarchy,” the “Creation,” while two match the “Sins.” We
may find in these engravings the spirit that informs the mural paint-
ings at Actopan and Xoxoteco; some of the tortures even match the
ones represented in both chapels; therefore, we cannot rule out the
possibility that Diego Valadés’ work, which was known in New Spain,
had served as a model for the design of the sections representing the
“Punishments and Deadly Sins,” in this structure’s north and south
walls; if this were to be the case, both the Franciscan engravings and
the Augustinian mural paintings may have a common source. (Estrada
de Gerlero, “Los temas” 80)
The images of torture at the hands of demons found at Actopan demon-

strate an intimate relationship, not only with Valadés’s work but also with
Olmos’s play. This is due to the fact that some of the tortures mentioned in
the latter may be found reproduced on the walls of this open chapel, in-
cluding the cauldron full of boiling water, as well as the burning metal
straps and the thorns.17 In fact, Estrada de Gerlero almost discovered this
dramatic-artistic hybrid when considering the variety of torments repre-
sented in Valadés’s engravings, since among them, “the following torments
stand- out: flaying, torture with pincers, the butcher’s table, and a cauldron
into which a naked human figure falls headfirst, in a position that resem-
bles that found at Actopan, where the woman with the snake is being
boiled” (“Los temas” 80– 81). This “woman of the snake” is no other than
Lucía, who in Olmos’s play was thrown into a temazcal (or cauldron) full
of boiling water by orders of the demon:
Come, oh, inhabitants of Avernus! Take these slaves of yours to the depths
of Hell. And this unfortunate woman, throw her into a fire temazcal, and
torment her there. (p. 172, this volume)
Estrada de Gerlero pauses to contemplate this female character because

she believes that Lucía finds her true origins in a medieval tradition, not
necessarily in the symbiosis of pre-Hispanic beliefs and those of the Chris-
tian church:
A female figure is repeated three times; she has a dark complexion, she
is naked, and she is partially trapped in the coils of a snake. This
woman of the snake, an allegory of lust and envy in medieval iconogra-
phy, is being boiled alive in a cauldron at Actopan. Sixteenth- century
156 · Chapter 4
European representations of this figure may be found in engravings by

Cranach and de Penez. When we initially analyzed the mural paint-
ing, we thought that she might represent the pre-Hispanic deity Cihua-
coatl, but rejected this hypothesis, because that figure is not a demon,
but a tortured soul. (“Los temas” 81)
Although the figure may not be considered a representation of the

Mother Goddess Cihuacoatl, the possibility that the pre-Hispanic god-
dess’ attributes constitute some kind of hybrid character—both dramatic
and pictorial—should not be so easily dismissed. Moreover, it would in-
deed appear that her representation in Andrés de Olmos’s play (1531–1533)
was re-created fifteen years later in three sections of Actopan’s open cha-
pel, an iconographic product of the concerted effort to invert the spiritual
values of the Indian catechumen, who considered this goddess a cosmic
mother, an ancestor of their culture and civilization, who was suddenly
turned into a sinful woman, tormented for all eternity within a burning
temazcal.
Final Considerations
Through the study and interpretation of certain literary documents and

the iconographic analysis of two mural painting programs developed
throughout this investigation, it may be determined that the first Indo-
Christian literary expression strictu sensu is found in the incipient plays
included under the label “evangelization theater” or “missionary the-
ater.” These primitive plays were the syncretic product of an ancient
representational (ethnodramatic) tradition, which had its origins both
in the Old and the New World. Although the subject matters of these
pieces are the result of the medieval European tradition of staging
exempla and miracles in the courtyards of churches and monasteries,
when these plays were transferred to New Spain within the context of
the native’s spiritual evangelization, they assumed discursive and repre-
sentational features that are neither European nor Indian. The result is
the synthetic product of two dramatic traditions, which, prior to the six-
teenth century, were completely unaware of each other. Their arena is
to be found within New Spain’s unique monastic structures, apparently
built by friars at least partly as a result of their similarity to the lay-
out of altars found in pre-Hispanic sacred precincts, although based
on a European architectural model related to the ciborium—a kind of
canopy used during the Middle Ages in the interiors of some European
churches. Perhaps, as Jaime Lara has noted, the original design of these
chapels may have been the responsibility of two Jewish theologians,
such as the Cordovan Maimonides, contemporary of Joachim of Fiore,
who drew the plan of the Temple designed to receive the true Jewish
Messiah.
The development of these incipient plays is related to that of their con-
comitant artistic (plastic) representation. Like the former, painting quickly
evolved during the early decades of New Spain’s spiritual conquest, on the
one hand, in the form of the pictorial canvas and the Testerian codex, and,
on the other, the exempla and dialogues designed to reach a public com-
prised of neophytes who, during the first phase of colonization, did not
speak the language of their conquerors. These two representative forms
came together in the architectural space of the open chapel, whose picto-
rial programs were at times inspired by engravings found in illustrated
books or in the design of contemporary evangelization plays, written by
bilingual friars and generally performed by Indian actors in Nahuatl, Mid-
dle America’s lingua franca.
Two examples of this iconographic convergence of mixed media are
found in the murals of the Augustinian convents at Actopan and Itzmiquil-
pan, Hidalgo. In the former, the subject of the Last Judgment was por-
trayed in a series of scenes painted on the open chapel’s interior walls;
their form and structure echo the first play known in New Spain, the Auto
del juicio final, whose authorship has been attributed to the Franciscan
expert in Nahuatl culture, Andrés de Olmos, along with other contempo-
rary works, such as Diego de Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana and Olmos’s
Tratado de hechicería y sortilegios. The intimate relationship shared with
the first known missionary play becomes evident when one observes the
inclusion of the only female character, Lucía, associated with the Nahua
goddess Cihuacoatl and who is thrice portrayed in Actopan’s pictorial pro-
gram. Although this syncretic relationship cannot be established beyond a
doubt, the fact that one of the Nahua’s mother goddesses was re-created,
in iconographical terms, as a sinful woman, tortured by the inhabitants of
Avernus, constitutes a twofold—both literary and pictorial—argument that
she was indeed incorporated as an early protagonist in the spiritual con-
quest of the Mexican natives.
In the case of Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings, the pictorial program’s
textual basis may be found not in Christian sources but in several “ser-
vice codices” created by members of the region’s Indian nobility. Accord-
ing to recently discovered documents that have been subject to a careful
158 · Chapter 4
iconographic analysis, the main basis of Itzmiquilpan’s extraordinary im-

ages is to be discovered in these codices created to solicit special favors
and rights from the Crown in exchange for the ser vices provided during
the constant wars waged against the Chichimec Indians on New Spain’s
northern border.
Appendix
The Last Judgment

(El auto del juicio final)
Exemplum Entitled The Last Judgment
Attributed to Fray Andrés de Olmos

From the Spanish translation by Fernando Horcasitas
Scene 1
[Sound of flutes. The Heavens will open. Saint Michael will descend to
Earth.]
Saint Michael
Oh, creatures of God: hear, as you already know, the divine orders of God,
Our Lord, how the world and the things created by God Our Beloved Fa-
ther will end, how they will be lost. They will be lost, all the things that He
made, every kind of bird, every kind of animal, and you as well will perish.
You shall disappear, oh, men of the Earth! In your hearts, you already know
that the dead will rise and the just, who obediently served the true judge,
God, shall be taken there, to his royal house, to enjoy the glory with his
saints.
But the wicked, who did not serve God Our Lord in their hearts, will suffer
the torments of Hell. Weep for that! Remember this! Have fear! Be fright-
ened! Because the Day of Judgment—a frightening, dreadful, awful, tremu-
lous day—will come upon you. Live your lives with rectitude, with regard to
159
160 · Appendix
the seventh [sacrament],1 because the Day of Judgment is coming. It has ar-
rived! It is here already!
Scene 2
[Sound of flutes; Saint Michael will go upstairs [and exit]. Penitence, Time, the
Holy Church, Confession, and Death will enter.]
Penitence
Let no one speak anymore about the foolishness of all the inhabitants of the
world, overwhelmed by all sorts of sins. What do they believe in? Why do they
behave so? They do not want to give up their heart’s dreadful transgressions,
the harshness of their blindness. Oh, four-hundred times wretched people!
They will die for their sins. They are deaf: they no longer listen. They are
blind: they no longer see. It would appear that sin has destroyed their eyes. It
has tasted sweet, it has smelled of perfume. They have versed themselves in
sin, as if they were building a house for themselves, as if they were covering
themselves with a cloak. They can no longer have life; they have considered it
as water, food. And they have forgotten Our Lord God, oh, four-hundred
times wretched people! Their life on Earth is coming to an end!
Time
I am Time. Time is always a divine sign that God Our Lord bestowed on me and
of which He put me in charge. Every day, I take care of them, watch over them,
and remind them. I don’t abandon them for a single moment, day or night. I
shout into their ears: remember the Creator, God the Maker, the Sovereign.
I exhort them to weep, to glorify Him, to serve Him, to fulfill the wishes of
God Our Lord. I implore them to go to His dear house, to serve Him, to beg
him to grant them his beloved grace.
But they fail to benefit from my life, from my work. I tell them: “I want to
save you; I am not to blame.” They will have to defend themselves in the pres-
ence of God, when they are summoned one by one. When they are questioned,
they will know what to answer.
And I am going to report to God the Father, who gave me all the power. And
they will find no excuses. Soon, they shall be summoned!
Holy Church
I am the merciful mother. My beloved young Lord Jesus Christ put me
here on Earth for the men of the world. I cry for them all the time, first and
foremost when one of them dies. I shed tears for them; I pray before my
beloved Holy Mother, a source of bliss, that she may take pity on them, that
she may enlighten her creatures, so they do not spurn the seventh sacra-
ment. I hold [the sacraments] here, for the moment in which they are
needed to sanctify [humanity]. I will feed them. I will give them something
to drink when they are thirsty. And now I wait for them, although I am sad.
Let them go, let them live their lives with rectitude, let them pray. They
will take pity on themselves. And let them weep: let them repent from their
sins and shortcomings!
Confession
Oh, Mother of the true faith! Everything you say is true. But they do not bear
that in mind; they do not desire that. They only wish to sin. Am I not doing
things the way I should? I summon them constantly. Every day I ask them to
confess, to examine themselves, to rise at daybreak, to do penance, to [prepare
themselves] for death. That is, to marry by the church, to purify their hearts
and souls, to fast, to refrain from eating. And, if they are not forgiven, they will
not be able to enter the lovely house of God Our Lord, if they do not fast first.
Because I will take them there if they deserve it. They already have a stairway
that reaches Heaven. And that is how they will be able to enter Heaven. One
by one, they will be summoned to the presence of God Our Lord, to give an
account of how they lived on Earth.
Death
I am the commissioner, the chosen one, Heaven’s envoy. All my power ex-
tends over Heaven and here on Earth. It shines brightly everywhere, in
Heaven and the universe. In their hearts, the inhabitants of the world know
that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow the Beloved Son of God will arrive to
sentence the living and the dead. He will take the just to his majestic house in
Heaven and he will cast the wicked, those who did not serve him on Earth,
into the depths of Hell. Thus, in their hearts, the inhabitants of the world
know that the Day of Judgment will arrive, and it will be a dreadful day when
it falls upon them. Meanwhile, they should live with rectitude, because [the
day] has come. They will now be judged, and they will be asked if they sought
God Our Lord.
Holy Church
What you have explained, what you have stated, is most true, you who served
as workers for my beloved only son, my spiritual husband, Jesus Christ. You
come to summon them, so that you may lead as redeemers of the world. Sinners
162 · Appendix
continue living in evil; they have debased themselves, they have stained
hearts and souls.
And now we go. Let us summon them so they may put their spiritual af-
fairs in order by lamentations, by tears. And I am the one who takes care
of them so they may purify themselves, so they may take a spiritual bath, so
they may rest unsoiled within the seventh sacrament, marriage, which I have
in store for them.
Time
I will leave now. I’m going to shout and call them. I’m going to marry them. At
all times, I remind them of their obligations to prevent them from going astray,
to prevent them from wasting the period of life that God Our Lord granted me
to care for them.
[Time exits alone.]
Holy Church
I am the only divine ray of faith and that is why I enlighten them. I produce
a spiritual light; that all Christians may come to be purified by me. They are
drunk with so much sin! But if they cry, if they wail, if they ask for forgiveness
from my Beloved Young Lord Jesus Christ, He will give them the celestial
kingdom.
[The Holy Church exits alone.]
Death
Truly, the men of Earth are to be pitied. They are blind; they forget that
they will be sentenced. They have sinned, thus staining their souls, by lead-
ing a frivolous life. What I say they understand. The inhabitants of the
world are blind: they no longer see. Sins have blackened their hearts and
souls. They do not repent. Let them purify themselves; let them bathe in
the good divine light!
Perhaps they will remember, perhaps they will cry when the Day of Judg-
ment comes, because truly there will be no more mercy. The Day of Judgment
is tomorrow, oh, four-hundred times wretched men of the world! It is coming,
it is here!
[Sound of trumpets. Death, Penitence, and Confession exit.]

Scene 3
[Lucía appears. She is very distraught.]
Lucía
Oh My God, My Lord Jesus Christ! It has happened, oh, wretched me! And
what is happening to me now? My soul is distraught, as if it had entered a
cloud. What can I do now? I will confess. Perhaps my soul will then be at rest.
I will seek a confessor because my face and heart are afflicted.
[Lucía will knock on a door. A Priest will appear.]
Lucía
May God Our Lord be with you, dear father.
[The Priest will enter the stage. He will speak.]
Priest
God Our Lord has guided you here, dear daughter! What do you want?
Lucía
I must tell you, dear father, why have I come, as long as you don’t get angry,
dear father.
Priest
What is it that you want, dear daughter? Tell me, because God Our Lord
has told us that we must listen to your confessions, the confessions of the
inhabitants of the world.
Lucía
Dear father: I want to confess before God Our Lord and before you, dear
father.
Priest
Daughter, that pleases me very much. I will listen to what distresses you,
to what grieves you, your sins. Let us go to church, to the house of God
Our Lord.
[Lucía will then confess and while she is confessing, the terrified Priest will
get up.]
164 · Appendix
Priest
Jesus! Jesus! What do you say, what have you done? Are you not a Christian?
Do you ignore that you have committed a four hundred times deadly sin? But
it has been done, oh, four hundred times wretched woman. Save, purify your
soul! Why have you not accepted the divine things? You have only followed
the devil [who has led you away from] the seventh holy sacrament, mar-
riage. It has happened, four hundred times wretched woman! Now, since
you did not want to marry on Earth, in your heart you know that at the end
of the day you will be married in Hell, because you deserve the torments of
the abyss. How are you going to answer to your God, your Lord? You will
not be able to help yourself because God’s judgment has come. Now you
will be horrified when the Beloved Son of God descends, when he comes to
judge the living and the dead, when everyone must answer before his Cre-
ator, God. And you too will appear before the true judge, the Beloved Son
of God, Jesus Christ.
[The Priest exits. Lucía remains.]
Lucía
Oh, oh, God! It has happened! Oh, I am a four hundred times wretched
woman on Earth! What have I heard? What dreadful thing has this beloved
son of God said? Perhaps I should have listened; I should have believed in what
my father, my mother, and all my relatives told me. They advised me to change
my life, but I scorned the blessed holy sacrament of marriage. It has happened,
now I’m four hundred times wretched!
Curse my pride, which gave birth to my conceit. Damn be Time and the
World, which is coming to an end, which is passing away. It is done: I feel
four hundred times wretched, in the most horrible way, because I am a great
sinner.
Scene 4
[Sound of flutes. The living will appear. They will sit on the floor, along with
Lucía.
The Antichrist will appear. He will wear the cloak of the damned. He will
wear the tunic on the outside. He will lift a finger from his left hand. Gun-
powder will explode. [The Antichrist] will enter.]
Antichrist
Oh, my beloved children! Do you not recognize me? I am the one who suf-
fered for you on Earth, the one who was distraught for you. You can now be
sure in your hearts that I will bring the Earth to an end, that I will destroy it.
You must believe in me, oh, my creatures, because I will forgive your sins,
your shortcomings. Believe in me, look at my blood, my sacred flesh.
First living person

You are not the one we are waiting for because Our God, Our Lord will come.
He suffered and died on the cross for us. There they stretched his arms out for
our four hundred great sins.
Lucía
Yes, you are certainly the one we have been waiting for, oh God, Our Lord, oh,
Our Lord, who will forgive our sins.
Antichrist
Yes, I am the one who will help you. Do you know not that I possess all the
power of the universe?
Scene 5
[The choir will begin the hymn Christus Factus Est. The Heavens will open.
Jesus Christ will approach. Saint Michael will come in front, bearing the
scales. Jesus Christ will carry the cross and will stop on the bank of the river.
The Antichrist will flee. Gunpowder will explode.]
Choir
[singing]
Christus factus est pro nobis
obediens usque ad mortem
mortem autem crucis.
Propter quod et Deus
exaltavit illum
et dedit illi nomen
quod est super onme nomen.
[For us, Christ went

Obediently to his death,
166 · Appendix
To his death on the cross.

And therefore God
Exalted him and gave him
A name that exceeds
All names.]
Jesus Christ
Come, my war chief, come to Heaven. I am now going to end, to destroy time.
It’s called the Last Judgment, the Day of Judgment, as I established in my di-
vine orders. I’m going to sweep, to clean Heaven and Earth, which the inhabit-
ants of the world, both living and dead, have stained with their bad conduct.
Awake, oh living and dead, good and evil! To the righteous ones I shall
give a splendid share in Paradise, full of flowers, the celestial jade, and the
heavenly palm tree of the river. And the wicked ones shall receive the house
of death and the afflictions of Hell because they have not followed my divine
orders.
[Jesus Christ will descend. Saint Michael will be seated.]
Jesus Christ
I have already told you what you must do, oh, my war chief.
Saint Michael
I agree, dear master, that the dead shall live again, that the living shall awake,
that the bones shall be assembled and that clay, mud, shall take their place,
so you can breathe life into spirit and soul, so they may answer, so they may
declare what they did right and what they did wrong.
Jesus Christ
My power will resurrect them, they will move because I will resurrect them, as
I rose on the third day. Amen. Let my creatures rise.
Scene 6
[Sound of flutes. Jesus Christ will exit through another door. He will not rise to
Heaven again. Subsequently, Saint Michael will sound the trumpet.]
First Angel
Resurrect, oh, the living, because God orders you to! Become flesh!
[Saint Michael will sound the trumpet again, calling the dead.]
Second Angel
Surgite mortui et venite ad iudicio! [Rise, oh, you the dead, and come to be
judged.] Resurrect, oh, you the dead, and come out of the ground. Become
flesh. God Our Lord has ordered it so.
[The dead (having recovered their flesh) will appear. Saint Michael will sound
the trumpet again.]
Saint Michael
You have been resurrected. Come together because you will now answer
to the true judge. Do not be anxious; consider that He is your God, your
Creator.
[Sound of flutes. Saint Michael will exit.]
Scene 7
[The Antichrist will appear. He comes to deceive the living and the dead. Christ
will appear much later.]
Antichrist
I have come to have my sacred orders fulfilled.
[The choir sings the Te Deum.]
Choir
[singing]
Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum confitemur.
Tu aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.
Tibi omnes Angeli; tibi Coeli, et universae potestates.
Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant:
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt coeli et terra maiestatis gloriae tuae.
Te gloriosus apostolorum chorus.
Te prophetarum laudabilis numerus.
Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus.
Te per orbem terrarium sancta confitetur ecclesia,
168 · Appendix
Patrem immensae maiestatis,

Venerandum tuum verum et unicum Filium.
Sanctum quoque Paraclitum Spiritum.
Tu rex gloriae, Christi.
Tu Patris sempiternus es filius.
Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem,
non horruisti virginis uterum.
Tu, devicto mortis aculeo aperuisti credentibus
regna coelorum.
Tu ad dexteram sedes in gloria Patris.
Iudex crederis esse venturus.
Te ergo, quaesumus, famulis tuis subveni,
quos pretioso sanguine redimisti.
Aeterna fac curn sanctis tuis in gloria numerari.
Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine, et benedic
haereditati tuae.
Et rege eos, et extolle illos usque in aeternum.
Per singulos dies benedicimus te.
Et laudamus nomen tuum in saeculum, et
in saeculum saeculi.
Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato
nos custodire.
Miserere nostri Domine, Miserere nostri.
Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos,
quemadmodum speramus in te
In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum.
Amen.
[We praise you, oh, Lord, we recognize you.

All the Earth praises you, Eternal Father.
And the angels, the heavens, and all the authorities do the same.
Cherubs and seraphim sing incessantly:
Holy, holy, holy, you are,
Lord and God of the Armies!
The Heavens and Earth overflow with the greatness
Of your glory.
The blessed ensemble of the apostles
And the crowd of the prophets praises you.
The immaculate army of the martyrs praises you.
And the Holy Church intones a hymn of praise.
A hymn to you, father of immense majesty,

To your worshipped, true, and only son,
And also to the Holy Spirit, the Redeemer.
You are, oh Christ, the king of glory, son of the eternal father.
To save mankind, you did not hesitate to become incarnate
In the womb of the Virgin.
And having destroyed the fear of death,
You opened the kingdom of Heaven to those who believed in you.
You sit to the right of the Father in his same glory.
We believe that you are the judge who will come
At the end of time.
Therefore, we beg you to remember your servants,
Because you redeemed them with your precious blood.
Take us among your saints in eternal glory.
Save your people, Lord, and save us, your inheritance.
Rule over us and honor us with you in eternity.
We praise you every day and we praise your holy
Name forever and ever.
Please, Lord, save us from sin today.
Take pity on us, Lord, take pity on us.
Pour your mercy on us, Lord,
As we have been waiting for.
Because I have trusted in you, oh Lord.
I hope I will not be disenchanted forever.
Amen.]
Scene 8
[The Antichrist will disappear. Gunpowder will explode. Afterward, Christ

will appear. The First and Second Angels will come, guided by Saint
Michael.]
Jesus Christ
Come here, oh celestial pearl, oh Saint Michael, the Archangel. Summon
the living and the dead to gather in my presence. I will ask for their account
of how they lived on Earth.
170 · Appendix
Saint Michael
It shall be done, dear master. I will summon them.
[Saint Michael will sound the trumpet. One by one, [the living and the dead]
will be seated before Christ. An angel will weigh [their good and bad deeds].
The First Dead Person will kneel.]
Jesus Christ
Come here. Did you fulfill my commandments while you lived on Earth? . . .
Speak. Answer as you used to speak on the Earth. Speak thus now.
First Dead person

Oh, My God, My Lord: I abided and I kept your blessed commandments. I
obeyed your orders. Question my [guardian] angel, dear master.
Jesus Christ
You served me well. You shall revel and be joyful in Heaven. Your happiness
shall never end, it shall never cease.
[Jesus Christ will bless him. Saint Michael will put him on the right side of
Christ.]
Jesus Christ
Come, oh, living. Who did you honor on Earth, whom did you love?
First Living person

You, My God, My Lord.
Jesus Christ
If I am indeed your God, your Lord, did you keep my divine commandments?
Did you fulfill them?
First Living person

That I did not do, divine Father. But forgive me because I am a sinner.
Jesus Christ
Forgiveness no longer exists. Go.
[Saint Michael will shove him away. Then, the Second Dead Person will
kneel before God.]
Jesus Christ
Come, you who used to be dead. What did you do when you lived on Earth?
Did you work for me? Did you serve me on Earth? Answer me.
Second Dead person

On no account. But forgive me Lord, Master, God.
Jesus Christ
No more. There is no forgiveness in judgment. Go.
[Saint Michael will shove the Second Dead Person away and the demons will
take him, throwing him to the ground. The Second Living, Lucía, will kneel.]
Jesus Christ
Come, you living. Have you fulfilled my ten divine commandments? Did you
love your fellow man and your father and your mother?
Lucía
Surely. I loved you above all My God, My Lord, and then my father and my
mother.
Jesus Christ
If I am indeed your God and you loved me above all and then your father and
your mother, did you keep my commandment and the commandment of my
beloved and glorious mother regarding the seventh sacred sacrament, that of
holy matrimony? Did you live a chaste life on Earth? Did you embody it?
Lucía
No, I have not served you, nor did I recognize your beloved mother. But for-
give me My God, My Lord.
Jesus Christ
While you were on Earth, your heart never looked to us. You merely spent
your time playing. Go. Let it be done. Perhaps you will remember your life of
sin, and you will suffer toils. Therefore, your heart should expect nothing else
from Heaven. You are wretched because you never wanted to marry on Earth.
You have earned the house in Hell that will be your torment. Go and see
those you served, because I do not know you.
[The demons will shove her away.]

172 · Appendix
Jesus Christ
Come here, you who lived on Earth. What moved your heart? My divine
words? Did you invoke me when you slept and when you were awake?
Third Dead person

I never forgot you, neither when I ate nor when I drank, neither when I was
awake nor when I was sleeping, beloved master.
Jesus Christ
You served me well, my creature. And likewise I always remembered you.
Therefore I kept your flowery necklace.
[Saint Michael will [place him] among the just.]
Jesus Christ
Come, oh, inhabitants of Avernus! Take these slaves of yours to the depths of
Hell. And this unfortunate woman, throw her into a fire temazcal, and tor-
ment her there.
Second Demon
Lord, you have done us a favor. In our hearts, we waited for you. . . . We have
been worthy, we have been favored by your beloved heart. We have managed
to retain your creatures.
[This demon now addresses another.]
Second Demon
Bring the blazing metal rope and the burning metal staff so we can flog them.
And tell our lord Lucifer that we are bringing his slaves to him, so he can imme-
diately send the burning metal thorns to the place where we are taking his slaves.
[Satan goes to bring the burning metal thorns.]
Satan
Here I bring everything we [need] to bind them, lest they escape from our
hands. We will now eat our food in the depths of Hell. We have done every-
thing in our power to make them fall into our hands.
All the Damned

Help us!
Jesus Christ
You shall no longer expect anything. In our hearts you may be sure that you
will remain in Hell’s abyss.
[They all speak again.]
Damned
Oh, Lord Our God, release us sinners!
[They will then be expelled. Gunpowder will explode. They will scream. The
just will be given flowery palm crowns. Christ will ascend to Heaven. He will
speak to them, from the middle of the stairs.]
Jesus Christ
Ascend to me, my servants. Receive what I have in store for you: the everlasting,
eternal bliss.
Scene 9
[Flutes will sound. The angels, Jesus Christ, and the just will rise. Lucía will
then be taken out this way. She will wear fire butterflies for earrings and a
serpent for a necklace. She will be tied by the waist. She will come screaming
and the demons will respond to her.]
First Demon
Move, you cursed woman. Don’t you remember what you did on Earth? You
will now pay there, in the abyss of Hell.
Lucía
It has happened to me, oh four hundred times wretched woman! I am a sinner
who deserves the infernal abode!
Satan
So now you shriek, wretched woman? We shall now make you take pleasure
in the depths of Avernus. There, in our stately house, we will marry you, since
you never wanted to get married on Earth. Go on! Move, Our Lord Lucifer is
waiting for you.
174 · Appendix
Lucía
Ay, ay, it has happened! Oh wretched me, oh sinner! My virtues have become
infernal tortures. I wish I had not been born on Earth. Oh, oh, curse the time
and the place where I was born! Curse the mother that gave birth to me! Oh,
curse the breasts that fed me! Curse everything that I ate and drank on Earth!
Oh, curse the soil that I walked on and the clothes that I wore!
Everything has turned to fire. Oh, it burns me whole! Fire butterflies sur-
round my ears and they represent the things with which I used to adorn my-
self, my jewels. And here around my neck I have a fire serpent that reminds
me of the necklace I used to wear. A horrible fire serpent, the heart of Mict-
lán, the infernal abode, clings to me! It reminds me of my worldly pleasures.
Oh, why didn’t I marry? Oh wretched me, it has happened!
First Demon
Now you will be imprisoned, now you will pay. That which your family warned
you about on Earth has befallen you.
[The demons flog Lucía.]
Satan
Go, wretched woman! So now you remember that you should have married?
Why did you not remember that when you lived on Earth? Now you will pay
for your wickedness. Go on, move!
[The demons will flog Lucía. They will take her away. Gunpowder will
explode. The demons will sound their trumpets.
It is understood that the Heavens, Earth, and Hell will shut. Neither
Lucía’s screams or the demons’ voices will be heard any longer.]
Scene 10
[A priest will appear (before the audience).]
Priest
Oh, my dear children, oh Christians, oh creatures of God! You have seen
this terrible, frightening thing. And everything is true, because it’s written
in the sacred books. Be aware, be alert, and look into your own mirror if you
don’t want these events to happen to you. God gives us this lesson, this
exemplum.
The Day of Judgment will come tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Pray
to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to the Holy Virgin Mary that she may ask her
beloved son Jesus Christ that after [the judgment] you may deserve, you may
receive the bliss and the glory of Heaven. Amen!
Choir
[singing]
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus. Et bene-
dictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis. Amen.
[God bless you, Blessed Mary, you are full of grace, and the Lord is with you.
You are blessed among all and above all women, and most blessed as well is
the fruit of your womb, Jesus Christ. Oh, Blessed Mary! Pray for us. Amen.]
Notes
Introduction
1. I refer to a Mexican literary expression sensu strictu, that is, the discursive-
representative result of the iconographic synthesis of two different cultures: Spanish
(and, by extension, European) and Mexican (particularly the civilization developed
by the Nahuas in the valley of Mexico and its surrounding area).
2. See the works of Walter Mignolo, included in the bibliography.
3. The theoretical model developed by Erwin Panofsky (iconology), first pre-
sented in his book Studies in Iconology, has provided an invaluable tool for my re-
search. Said analysis involves a tripartite interpretation based on pre-iconographic
observations, such as, those of a descriptive-formalist nature, and a limited iconographic
analysis, that is, a form of exegesis (hence its relation to written discourse). These
stages are united in order to extrapolate the subjects and concepts that reflect the
thought patterns and essential trends of the human mind (iconology).
4. One must acknowledge that this so- called hybrid expression, the immediate
result of the encounter between the Nahuas and Spaniards, refers only to the few mis-
sionary plays, composed in the Mexican (Nahuatl) language by a handful of friars, in
order to contribute to the evangelization of the natives, as well as certain pictorial
programs painted on monastery walls, carried out by Indian painters, during a short
period of time (thirty to forty years). Clearly, New Spain’s literature as a whole com-
prises a creative production written in Spanish, in prose or in verse, in the form of
chronicles or lyrical poetry, written even by mestizo authors, lasting until the eigh-
teenth century and laying the permanent foundations of the literature of New Spain
and, by extension, of modern Mexico (personal communication with José Pascual
Buxó).
5. According to Lockhart’s exhaustive study of Nahua linguistic culture (see The
Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Mexico,
Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries), the term tlacuilo is the root of the verb
icuiloa, which meant (around the middle of the sixteenth century) “painter” or (from
our perspective) “writer.” This word was sometimes modified, depending on the me-
dium in which the artist worked: therefore, amatlacuilo means “paper writer” and
tlacatlacuilo means “man painter.” Alonso Molina, author of the foundational Vo-
cabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana (Vocabulary in the
Castilian and Mexican Languages), published in New Spain’s incipient press in 1571,
177
178 · Notes to Pages 4–11
is less descriptive: “Painter generally: tlacuilo” (96). Lockhart also points out that, like
the Nahua terms amatl (paper) and tlilli (ink), “for the Nahuas writing [and painting]
continued to be what they had been before the Conquest, part of a broader communi-
cation system, from which it cannot be separated, without losing perceptiveness”
(326). Therefore, one may infer that the term tlacuilo did not immediately fall into
disuse; rather, it was used during the first stages of linguistic exchange between Na-
huatl and the recently arrived language of the conquistadores. However, the noun
“tlacuilo” has not lost its original meaning, even today.
6. Elena Estrada de Gerlero, personal communication.
7. New Spain’s first printing press was established in 1539. The first missionary
order disembarked in 1524, three years after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and,
after the arrival of “The Twelve” apostolic Franciscans, other orders arrived, predomi-
nantly Dominicans and Augustinians. The last orders to arrive established themselves
in far-flung regions within the new territory in order to carry out a missionary and
cultural enterprise with an enormous scope—and even greater implications—that has
been the subject of many ecclesiastical and historiographical studies.
8. Fray Juan de Grijalva, chronicler of the Augustinians in New Spain, claims
that the work was directed by Fray Andrés de Mata, who also built the nearby monastery
at Itzmiquilpan (where he died in 1574). See Santiago Sebastián, “Libros hispalenses
como clave del programa iconográfico de la escalera de Actopan,” for a detailed study
of the pictorial program of this section of the monastery at Actopan.
9. In her monograph “El nombre y su morada: Los monogramas de los nombres
sagrados en el arte de la nueva y primitva Iglesia de Indias,” an essay included in the
catalog of the exhibition Parábola novohispana (The Parable of New Spain), edited by
Elisa Vargas Lugo de Bosch, Elena Estrada de Gerlero complements this hypothesis,
reminding us that the monogram “the sweet name of Jesus” is the graphic result of a
devotion that was favored by Augustinians and Franciscans, probably introduced by
Fray Pedro de Gante (Parábola novohispana 177–200). Therefore, and given the ex-
tensive use of “bookish” images (frontispieces, marginalia, etc.), as subject matters and
ornamental devices for New Spain’s mural paintings, it is not surprising that this an-
cient Confessionario, with a publication date that matches that of the Augustinian
monastery at Acolman, served as a graphic model for the adornment of the aforemen-
tioned vault.
10. In 1525 the recently arrived Franciscans built a monastery at Huejotzingo,
when the original pre-Hispanic city was still located in a spot that was difficult to
reach, because it was set between deep ravines. In 1529 Huejotzingo was moved to its
current location and that first monastery was demolished in order to build a new one
with its original stones, but that monastery did not survive either. The current monas-
tery of San Miguel is the third one built by the Franciscans, between 1544 and 1570,
under the guidance of Fray Juan de Alameda. Santiago Sebastián analyzes its Porziun-
cola in his book Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano (Iconography and Iconology
of the Art of New Spain).
Regarding the “Hebraic” or “Jerusalemite” columns, it should be mentioned that
the latter “order” was proposed by the Cistercian bishop, professor, linguist, and phi-
losopher Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606–1682) in his architectural treatise in
three volumes, entitled Architectura civil recta y obliqua: Considerada y dibuxada en el
Templo de Jerusalen. Evidently, the name of this par ticular type of column emerged
Notes to Pages 11–15 · 179
approximately one hundred years after Huejotzingo’s Porziuncola was built; as John
McAndrew has pointed out, the direct source of architectural inspiration for Huejotz-
ingo’s Porziuncola is to be found in the treatise Medidas del romano o Vitruvio by Diego
Sagredo.
11. The textual description of the Temple that Solomon built to worship God
is found in book 2, chapter 3, of “Chronicles.” Verses 16–17 describe how “He made
wreaths of chain work, as in the inner sanctuary, and put them on top of the pillars; and
he made one hundred pomegranates, and put them on the wreaths of chain work.”
Then he “set up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand and the other on
the left; he called the one on the right hand Jachin, and the one on the left Boaz.”
According to Santiago Sebastián, this description is architecturally reflected in the
adornment of Huejotzingo’s Porziuncola, although the possible graphic models pro-
posed by the Spanish scholar are unacceptable, largely due to the fact that two of his
examples are clearly taken from eighteenth- century works, based on de Lobkowitz’s
treatises, while the other is a drawing directly copied from the columns of Huejotz-
ingo’s Porziuncola. Therefore, I suggest here the possibility of an architecture that is
not the re-creation of a graphic model, not even the imitation found in a treatise on
architecture, but the result of a close textual reading (exegesis) that provides the basis
for an architectural-sculptural creation.
12. According to John McAndrew, the reading and interpretation of Diego de
Sagredo’s treatise, entitled Medidas del romano o Vitruvio (first edition, 1526), and,
particularly, the section devoted to “the formation of the said monstrous columns/
candlesticks and balusters,” inspired the strange columns of Huejotzingo’s Porziuncola
(The Open- Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Chapels,
and Other Studies 323).
13. According to Elena Estrada de Gerlero, they were probably itinerant artists,
some of whom came from schools founded by friars at such institutions as San José
de los Naturales, established by Fray Pedro de Gante a few years after the conquest,
where the Indians where trained in arts and trades. Therefore, it is hardly surprising to
discover that, besides Huejotzingo’s Porziuncola, there are examples of the participa-
tion of these Indian artisans in other aspects of the complex’s decoration, in which the
effect of stone carved not with a metal instrument but with another stone is clearly
visible—a notable product of a pre-Hispanic technique.
14. For more information, see Olivier Debroise, “Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades
en tránsito: El caso de los murales de San Miguel Iztmiquilpan,” in Arte, historia
e identidad en América: Visiones compartidas: Actas del XVII Coloquio Internacional
de Historia del Arte.
15. According to his biographer, Vicente Justiniano Antist (1543–1599), “before
preaching [Saint Vicente Ferrer] always said Mass, singing in the same Church where
he would then preach, when there was room enough for the people; when so many
people attended, a bigger place was needed, so he had a big stage made, with a plat-
form or corridor from which he could preach; and in another part of the said stage an
altar was prepared, where the whole town could see him as he said Mass” (Garganta
and Forcada 1956, 16). Like the monastic courtyards of sixteenth- century New Spain,
some of medieval Europe’s religious structures also included a large outdoor space
designed for open-air preaching, such as the one found at the Scala Dei monastery in
Catalonia.
16. When in the pages of his Apologética historia sumaria, Fray Bartolomé de las
Casas mentions the atrium of the Franciscan monastery at Tlaxcala, he describes “a
big square, enclosed by battlements, a structure approximately one story from the
ground, whitewashed with lime, very beautiful, which the Indians build in front of
the door of each church, which can hold thirty, forty or fifty thousand people: it’s
something to behold” (333).
17. In the third volume of his Historia eclesiástica indiana (Indian Ecclesiastical
History), written between 1574 and 1596, Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta describes these
atriums as great fortified courtyards in front of the church, which was usually
adorned with trees (cypress or orange trees, depending on the climate), laid out in
ordered rows. According to the Franciscan, these spaces were designed to be used
during sacred days, so that all neighbors who met there could listen to Mass, since
there was not enough space for them in the church’s nave, a space that, according to
him, was used only weekdays (70). Oddly, in his Itinerario, written in 1570 and pub-
lished in Seville by Diego Valadés, Father Juan Forcher does not mention any of these
unique spaces, nor their par ticular use, a lacuna that McAndrew attributes to the
ephemeral life of the original role given to these spaces, since, after the plague of 1576,
the great missionary peak in central Mexico had come to an end. Nevertheless, he points
out that this is only an inference (McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-
Century Mexico 209).
18. Although the massive Indian presence was a decisive factor for the construc-
tion of these peculiar buildings, Jaime Lara, in City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological
Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain attributes the original design of
these chapels to Jewish theologians, such as Maimonides of Córdoba, Joaquín de
Fiore’s contemporary, who drew up the plan for a temple that would receive the Jews’
true Messiah. Lara points out that this sketch is “significant to our interest in the New
World, due to the fact that his project includes four chambers—similar to processional
chapels—which will become the hallmark of all subsequent Christian and Jewish at-
tempts to create a general design of Solomon’s Temple” (126). It seems that this Jewish
theological current influenced Christian thinkers, such as Richard of San Víctor,
whose illustrated work, entitled Sobre la visión de Ezequiel (On the Vision of Ezequiel),
was published in Paris in 1518, six years before the departure of the twelve Franciscan
apostles to New Spain (126–29).
19. In her article “Scenes of Cognition: Per formance and Conquest” Diana Tay-
lor uses the term “per formance” to describe these representations, while recognizing
that “While per for mance helps elucidate the many interconnected levels associated
with the Amerindian practices I have been examining, this term—like theatre—
also points to ideological and epistemological frameworks that differ radically
from those found in the Native Americans. My understanding of embodied prac-
tice in relation to the worldviews and enacted behaviors of indigenous peoples has
little to do with European notions of linearity, representation, mimesis, image, and
ephemerality, which are associated with theatre, and, at times, per for mance. The
idea of per for mance, Native American enactments insist, needs to be expanded”
(366).
20. De las Casas, in his Apologética historia sumaria, recounts his participation in
the festivities of the day of Our Lady of the Assumption, in 1538, at Tlaxcala, where
he sang the High Mass. In this festive context, de las Casas himself is amazed that
only Indian actors participated: “The apostles or the ones that represented them were
Indians, as in all the above-recited acts (and we must always suppose that no Spaniard
understands or participates in their per formances) and the one who represented Our
Lady was an Indian, and every one of them, Indian. They delivered their dialogues in
their language, and all their acts and movements with much good sense and devo-
tion” (333).
21. See Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.
22. Lockhart points out, “Perhaps the Nahuas never really thought of Spain as
the ‘land of chickens,’ but it is hard to find any other explanation of how they arrived
at the meaning (and in the records that have reached us, the word has no other)”
(277–78).
23. Matthew Restall, a historian of Latin America and disciple of Lockhart, ques-
tions the possible confusion of Cortés with Quetzalcoatl on the part of the Indians in
his book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.
24. The “Ordinances for Painters and Gilders” of 1557 prohibited “Indians and
other people who have not studied these trades, or have knowledge of them, from
representing Sacred Images” (cited in Toussaint, La pintura en México durante el siglo
XVI, 220). Due to decrees such as these, it quickly becomes evident that by the mid-
dle of the sixteenth century there were also European artists working in New Spain,
likely in tandem with Indian painters, whose labor was closely supervised by the in-
cipient colonial apparatus.
25. See Constantino Reyes-Valerio, El pintor de conventos: Los murales del siglo
XVI en la Nueva España.
26. The Anales de Juan Bautista (Annals of Juan Bautista), a Nahuatl manuscript
prepared in the second half of the sixteenth century by a group of artisans of the
neighborhood of San Juan Moyotlan, in Mexico City, which has been recently trans-
lated and published in its entirety by Luis Reyes García, records “numerous facts
about the painters, although there is no information regarding whether these painters
were pre-Hispanic artists or if they had studied in the school at San José de los Natu-
rales, founded by Fray Pedro de Gante.” See Reyes García, ¿Cómo te confundes? ¿Acaso
somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista, p. 47. “Unfortunately,” the investigator
continues, “we only know the age of Marcos Cipac or Marcos Tlacuilol, a Moyoteca
painter. In February 1565 (§352), he declared that he was 52 years old, that is, that he
was born in 1513; when the Franciscans arrived, in 1524, he was 11 years old and he
could have certainly trained at Fray Pedro de Gante’s school” (48). However, it is not
entirely impossible that, around the middle of the sixteenth century, one could find
elderly men who had learned their craft within the pre-Hispanic context, and that is
precisely what Reyes-Valerio demonstrates in El pintor de conventos.
27. In her book Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico,
Louise Burkhart points out that “Privy to the sacred knowledge of the conquerors,
they were wise youths in a society that equated wisdom with old age. Interpreters
between European and Nahua worlds, the young men became cultural brokers
negotiating the exchange of symbols and meanings between conquerors and con-
quered” (59).
28. “Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Vacillating Epic” is a chapter in Carlos Fuentes’s
book Valiente mundo nuevo: Épica, utopía y mito en la novela hispanoamericana
(Brave New World: Epic, Utopia, and Myth in Spanish American Novel).
29. Diego Valadés was born in Tlaxcala in 1533, likely of mestizo origin: it has
been held that his mother was a Tlaxcaltecan Indian and his father the conquistador
Diego Valadés, who, after arriving to the West Indies, joined Hernán Cortés’s troops
and participated in the siege and capture of Tenochtitlan. Among the few details of
the friar’s life, we know that despite his mestizo origin he joined the Franciscan order.
He was possibly under the guidance of Fray Pedro de Gante and was a reader at Santa
Cruz de Tlatelolco from 1553 until he was ordained in 1555.
30. Taylor states, “Usually, the per formances took place outdoors, sometimes in
very public spaces such as temples and courtyards, sometimes in the semi-secluded
space of a private patio. The aim of these [pre-Hispanic] per formances varied, though
they always involved a religious component” (“Scenes of Cognition” 359).
31. In the 1970s, Elena Isabel Estrada de Gerlero investigated the European influ-
ences in the design of this “monumental frieze” while also studying the historical and
political conditions of the second half of the sixteenth century that would have al-
lowed for the re-creation of several models of pre-Hispanic military dress within the
nave of an Augustinian temple located in Mexico’s northern border and that may be
seen in this mural painting program. Estrada de Gerlero wonders: “What happened
to the organization of the Indian army once the Conquest had started and how did these
allied armies join the diverse campaigns of the [Spanish] Crown? Were the military
hierarchies by which high-level Indian warriors could act as go-betweens between
simple soldiers and tamemes (porters) and the Spanish chiefs preserved? How did dress
and the use of certain weapons gradually change?” See Estrada de Gerlero, “El friso
monumental de Itzmiquilpan,” p. 16. Based on a certain postconquest codex and
particularly on the Tlatelolco Codex and the Tlaxcalan Canvas, Estrada de Gerlero
points out that these “were painted in approximately 1560 and are reports of merits
and ser vices intended for the Crown. Therefore, as they represent Indian warriors in
their traditional gear, we must suppose that they did not resort to fantasy and that the
diverse emblems and hierarchies were accepted by the Crown. That’s how we can
explain the way in which the emblematic wealth which distinguished the Indian
army in the pre-Hispanic period was preserved” (ibid.) Olivier Debroise might have
discovered the official motive that explains the endurance of pre-Hispanic military
dress in an ordinance of the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, “who
created in 1537 the ephemeral order of the ‘Tecle Knights,’ with the aim of providing
titles to his assistants, without jeopardizing the properties of Spanish holders of enco-
miendas” (Debroise, “Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades en tránsito” 169). Upon con-
sulting Alonso Molina’s dictionary, Debroise notes that this Nahua word is an “alteration
of tecuitzin—senators, principals of the city” (ibid.).
32. Personal communication with José Pascual Buxó.
33. In his foundational study of New Spain’s syncretic art, La escultura colonial
Mexicana (Mexican Colonial Sculpture), José Moreno Villa proposes that “in order to
invent the term tequitqui, one must bear in mind in the first place the meaning of the
Arab-Mudéjar word (“Mudechan”). It means tributary. The Mudéjar man was the
Muslim who without changing religion remained a vassal of the Christian kings dur-
ing the Reconquest. Here, the Indians were the vassals and tributaries. Why don’t we
look for the equivalent Aztec [Nahuatl] word and use it to name, as was done in Spain,
the works which feature this very special amalgam of styles? It is not an unimportant
matter. We must call each thing by its proper name if we want to understand one an-
other. And the Mexican situation cannot be called Mudéjar, although it corresponds
to this Hispanic mode, as an interpretation of several styles, according to their own
tradition and the way in which they worked. I propose the ancient Mexican word ‘te-
quitqui,’ which means tributary. And I invite experts in native languages to [choose] a
better option” (16).
Chapter 1
1. While I was writing this book, an anthology of Mesoamerican literature was
finally published in Mexico, in 2004, and it includes fragments of these Indo- Christian
texts, among many others. See Miguel León-Portilla and Earl Sharris, eds., Antigua y
nueva palabra: Antología de la literatura mesoamericana, desde los tiempos precolombinos
hasta el presente. The anthology had been already published in English in 2002 as In the
Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to Present.
2. In his collection of essays, Valiente mundo nuevo: Épica, utopía y mito en la
novela hispanoamericana (Brave New World), Carlos Fuentes argues that Bernal Díaz
del Castillo “has one foot in Europe and another in America and he fills the dramatic
gap between the two worlds in a literary and peculiarly modern way” (73). Further on,
he baptizes Díaz del Castillo as “our first novelist” (74). For more information, see
Verónica Cortínez’s Memoria original de Bernal Díaz del Castillo (Bernal Díaz del
Castillo’s Original Memory).
3. I employ the terms “New Spain” and “New Spanish” (its adjectival form) in an
attempt to define the artistic and dramatic products of this period of initial contact.
They differ from the terms “Mexico” or “Mexican,” something that will become appar-
ent as my argument develops.
4. I refer to a literary tradition inspired by the letters and chronicles regarding the
New World that today, almost five hundred years after they were written, have begot-
ten a literary tradition that may be divided into two significant schools or trends: Alejo
Carpentier’s “marvelous real” and Gabriel García Márquez’s “magical realism.” Per-
ceptive as ever, Alfonso Reyes picks up—without analyzing it in depth—the genesis
of what would later become Latin American literature: “The stories and epics of the
Conquest hid a practical purpose: charging for ser vices rendered. They sought a false
balance between appearance and reality—a certain prosaic nature already implicit
in the traditions of Spanish epic poetry, which may complement the chronicles and
which always resisted the marvelous—and the eagerness to exaggerate the debt, an
eagerness which has been subject to mockery since Oquendo, à propos his spurious
feats in the town of Tucumán” (Reyes, Letras de la Nueva España 64).
5. See Constantino Reyes-Valerio, Arte indocristiano. Escultura del siglo XVI en
México (Indo- Christian Art. Sixteenth- Century Sculpture in Mexico). In his work El
teatro náhuatl: Épocas novohispana y moderna (Nahuatl Theater: New Spain and the
Modern Age), Fernando Horcasitas states, upon considering this subgenre, that “an-
other significant aspect is the literary one. Both the friars and the Indians created
and staged the plays, therefore producing new literary forms, quite different from
Indian pre-Hispanic literature and the literature of the Iberian peninsula. [ . . . ] In
summary, Nahuatl theater differs from Spanish drama of the time not only because
of its literary forms, but also due to its ideas and subject matters; therefore, it presents
something new” (54).
6. I refer to the already known (but scarce and therefore hardly influential)
poems included in Nezahualcoyotl’s Cantares mexicanos (Mexican Songs) and other
scattered pre- Columbian literary works. The most meticulous study of pre-Hispanic
literature is found in the two volumes of the Historia de la literatura náhuatl (History
of Nahuatl Literature) compiled by the noted Jesuit scholar Ángel María Garibay.
7. As for New Spain’s incipient theater, it should be pointed out that Robert
Ricard, in La conquista espiritual de México, considers missionary plays an essen-
tial indigenous cultural expression: “In general terms, all this edifying theater is char-
acterized by a very strict and very careful adaptation to the spiritual personality and
nature of the Indians, as well as to the situation in which they found themselves with
regard to the new religion. It is completely Indian, not by reason of its inspiration, but
by its language and actors. The texts agree that those who participated in these per for-
mances, whether as actors themselves, or as extras, singers, and dancers, were Indi-
ans and that every song and every dialogue was in the Indian language, frequently
Nahuatl, as it was some sort of universal language and the missionaries insisted on
spreading it more and more” (312).
8. Lockhart, in The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of
the Indians of Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, refers to this situation
as the process of double mistaken identity and summarizes it as follows: “Likewise, in
the cultural sphere, the degree of contact between the two populations helped shape
centuries-long processes combining gradual transformations with deep continuities,
depending on the relative attributes of the two. Wherever human beings come in
touch, there will be both conflict and cooperation, both congregation and avoidance;
some things on both sides will be strongly affected, others, less so. . . . In the early
stages, what one typically finds is the preliminary identification of intrusive and indig-
enous elements, allowing an indigenous concept or practice to operate in a familiar
manner under a Spanish- Christian overlay” (5). I have chosen the nomenclature estab-
lished by Lockhart regarding the designation of the “Mexica,” “Aztecs,” or “Nahua,”
because, according to the historian, the latter term best describes the way in which
they recognized themselves: “These people I call the Nahuas, a name they sometimes
used themselves and the one that has become current today in Mexico, in preference
to Aztecs. The latter term has several decisive disadvantages: it implies a kind of quasi-
national unity that did not exist, it directs attention to an ephemeral imperial agglom-
eration, it is attached specifically to the pre- conquest period, and by the standards of
the time, its use for anyone other than the Mexica (the inhabitants of the imperial
capital, Tenochtitlan) would have been improper even if it had been the Mexica’s
primary designation, which it was not” (1).
9. As summarized by Fernando Horcasitas, in El Teatro náhuatl: Épocas novo-
hispana y moderna: “In Mexico, these missionaries faced an intensely religious popu-
lation, whose beliefs resembled, at least in a superficial manner, those of the Spaniards.
Mexicans believed in the divinity (for them, Ometecuhtli: Lord Two); that men had
been created by the Gods; in a Goddess (Tonantzin); in heroic saints (Topiltzin-
Quetzalcoatl); in good and bad spirits; in commandments, miracles, confession, pen-
ance, and communion; in sacred places and pilgrimages; and in life after death”
(74–75).
10. Lockhart qualifies this statement, establishing parallel elements between In-
dians and Spaniards that facilitated the evangelization of the Nahuas: “The friars had
stepped into a situation already made for them (and for the governmental officials to
whom they had given less than full credit). The extent of their success depended pre-
cisely upon the acceptance and retention of indigenous elements and patterns that in
many respects were strikingly close to those of Europe. Relatively few of the friars’
innovations were entirely new to the Mesoamericans” (The Nahuas after the Con-
quest 4). See chapter 7 of The Nahuas after the Conquest for a detailed discussion
about the linguistic phenomena that have been outlined here.
11. In his influential ethno-historical study entitled Quetzalcóatl and Guada-
lupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, originally published in
French in 1974 as Quetzalcóatl et Guadalupe—La formation de la conscience na-
tional au Méxique, Jacques Lafaye contemplates and analyzes the significance of this
kind of religious syncretism vis-à-vis its importance to the formation of the Mexican
nation.
12. In his monograph La Jerusalén indiana (Indian Jerusalem), Miguel Ángel
Fernández remarks that, with regard to the word “patio,” which the chronicles used to
describe what today we know as the atrium, “it’s curious to confirm that the old chron-
icles used the term ‘patio,’ both to describe the pre-Hispanic square, as well as to refer
to the monastery’s courtyard” (192).
13. The significance and development of these architectural spaces, along with
their relation to mural painting cycles and missionary theater, will be dealt with in
greater detail in the next chapter.
14. Although examples of codices preserved on amatl (a Mexican paper made from
a type of fig tree bark) are scarce, the existence of works of pre-Hispanic mural painting,
such as the still-visible fragments unearthed in Teotihuacan (Tolteca-Teotihuacano),
Bonampak (Maya), and Cacaxtla (Olmeca-Xicalanca), bears mute testimony to a his-
torical reality that was artistically perpetuated over the centuries.
15. On this matter, Fernando Horcasitas, in El Teatro náhuatl: Épocas novohispana
y moderna, poses a rhetorical question: “Was there drama among Mexicans before the
arrival of the friars?” His answer is succinct yet precise: “How we answer this question
will depend on our definition of the word ‘drama’ ” (33). Further on, he states: “There
was an abundance of dramatic sense in every Aztec feast day, not only in ceremonies—
processions, songs, dances, costumes, and stagings—but also in their emotional con-
tent” (36).
16. Vigil’s work, Reseña histórica de la literatura mexicana, is undated, but it is
known to have been written in the nineteenth century.
17. In his description of La toma de Jerusalén (The Capture of Jerusalem), which was
performed in Tlaxcala around the middle of the sixteenth century, Motolinia tells how
the friars had postponed the baptism of many adults until the day of the performance,
because one of the friars “also brought many industrious Turks or adult Indians, to have
them baptized, and there they publicly requested the Pope for their baptism and His
Holiness ordered a priest to baptize them, and they were then baptized” (Historia de los
indios de la Nueva España 72).
18. However, in her previously cited article “Scenes of Cognition: Per formance
and Conquest,” Diana Taylor warns that “terms such as theater and performance im-
perfectly signal sixteenth-century systems of incorporated practice that create and
transmit social memory. Yet, I feel I need to continue to use them” (356). Therefore, I
have used the phrase “spiritual performance” because it considers, as much as possible,
the collective participation between “actors” and the audience members who were, on
many occasions, one and the same.
19. This is not surprising if we take into consideration, for example, the vast quan-
tity of illustrated books of that period that used a language that could be defined as
emblematic, because it depended on both a literary as well as on an iconographic ex-
egesis, something that may be compared to the mnemonic system that had been de-
veloped by the tlacuilos of the Nahua culture who invented a complex ideographical
system to preserve their collective memory.
20. I should point out that the definition of the word “theater” has been modified
throughout the centuries. The third volume of El diccionario de autoridades (Dic-
tionary of Authorities) (1726) defines it as follows: “Theatro. s.m. El sitio, ó parage for-
mado en semicírculo, en que se juntaba el Pueblo á vér algun espectáculo, ó función”
(“Theater. n.m. The place or spot, shaped in a semicircle, in which the Town gathered
to see some performance or show”) (267). Thus it may be better understood how this
term was employed, for example, by Hernán Cortés, to describe a space devoted to pre-
Hispanic performances. See Diccionario de autoridades.
21. This tradition bears certain similarities to the sacred calendar of Catholic ritu-
als, many of which were movable, just like most pre-Hispanic celebrations, which
were synchronized with the movements of the Moon, the planets, or the Sun. For
both cultures, these dramatic per formances had an unquestionably sacred and there-
fore ritual origin.
22. Despite the fact that Durán was not an eyewitness to the per formances he
describes, the chronicler hinted that some of these works were still performed during
his time. In one section of his chronicle, he remarks: “I could count many other
entremeses, farces, jesters and performers, but it does not serve the purpose of this
account, because my only intention is to warn about the evil things that used to hap-
pen, so that today, if anything of the kind were to be suspected or perceived, it could be
prevented and stamped out, as is right” (Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España
e islas de Tierra Firme, vol. 1, 257).
23. It should be pointed out that Durán refers to these stagings as entremeses, a
dramatic genre developed in Spain by Lope de Rueda with his Pasos and perfected a
century later by Miguel de Cervantes. It is a peculiar fact that the friar might have
chosen this term, used to designate a dramatic subgenre of a purely secular nature,
because all the details describe a religious event, although one that incorporates some
of the characteristics of the Spanish entremés. According to the Diccionario de autori-
dades, the entremés is a “brief, jocular, and comic per formance, which is usually in-
serted between two acts of a comedy, as to increase variety, or to entertain and cheer up
the audience. It’s derived from the Latin word intermedium, and that is the reason some
call it Intermedio” (Diccionario de autoridades 519).
24. With regard to the inherent resemblance shared between European and
Indian dramatic per for mances, it is appropriate to point out that, in pre-Hispanic
Mexico, as well as in medieval and Renaissance Europe, the participation of women
in plays was strictly forbidden, so it is no surprise that a Mexica pipiltin was assigned
the role of the goddess Xochiquetzal.
25. In a footnote, Rojas Garcidueñas points out that “the lines I have quoted ap-
pear in a document which was presented to me in a typed copy by professor Nicolás
Rangel, under whose watchful eye and advice it was begun and partially completed,
during the years 1931–34, when Rangel was one of the historians working at the Ar-
chivo General de la Nación [General Archive of the Nation], where he frequently
consulted documents belonging to the archives of Inquisition” (Rojas Garcidueñas,
El teatro en la Nueva España en el siglo XVI 24).
26. A clear example of this relationship may be found in the cycle of mural paint-
ings at the church dedicated to San Miguel Arcángel in Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. The
images—clearly born from the indigenous tradition—are an iconographic reproduc-
tion of a “feast of surrender,” celebrated on Mexico’s northern frontier, some sort of
dramatic per formance whose textual basis has been proposed by Olivier Debroise.
This relationship will be discussed at length in Chapter 3.
27. Mural painting was the second hybrid art form that flourished in the region;
additionally, it required the involvement of another artistic form, that is, architecture,
because the mural cycles required buildings with a roof in which they could be exe-
cuted and protected from the elements, while missionary theater was developed in the
open (and natural) spaces of the courtyards of the recently built monasteries.
28. Ricard specifies, “In theater, as well as in open-air celebrations, we must bear
in mind that it’s one more case of substitution, since the Aztecs also had known a sort
of theater, of which we unfortunately have almost no material which would allow us
to comprehend its nature” (La conquista espiritual de México 304).
29. The papal bull Exponi Nobis Fecesti granted apostolic authority to the Fran-
ciscans and other orders to convert the Indians to Christianity. These first twelve
Franciscans were organized in what may be considered a numerological manner
because Christ had had twelve apostles and Saint Francis had been accompanied
by twelve companions on his pilgrimage to Rome. The Franciscans who arrived in
Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1524 were, according to Robert Ricard, “Martín de Valencia,
Francisco de Soto, Martín de Jesús (or de la Coruña), Juan Suárez (or more correctly,
Juárez), Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia), García de
Cisneros, Luis de Fuensalida, Juan de Ribas, Francisco Jiménez, Andrés de Córdoba,
and Juan de Palos. Their superior was Fray Martín de Valencia; Fray Francisco Jimé-
nez was ordained shortly after his arrival to New Spain while Fray Andrés de Córdoba
and Fray Juan de Palos remained as lay brothers” (La conquista espiritual de México
84). As George Kubler has pointed out in his Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth
Century, “[T]heir number explicitly appears in 1523, at the time of their appointment
as twelve “quoniam hic fuit numerus discupulorum Christi” (8).
30. Many cultural elements have been taken into consideration as a psychological
or religious weapon for the subjugation of the Mexican Indians. See, for example,
Lourdes Tourrent, La conquista musical de México (The Musical Conquest of Mexico).
Besides the foundational study by Robert Ricard, already cited, one may also consider
José María Kobayashi’s monograph, La educación como conquista: La empresa francis-
cana en México (Education as Conquest: The Franciscan Enterprise in Mexico), as
another example of cultural conquest.
31. John McAndrew, in his essential study entitled The Open-Air Churches of
Sixteenth- Century Mexico, points out the peaceful nature of the spiritual conquest
and compares it to the experience of the Teutonic tribes of the fifth and sixth centu-
ries and, more precisely, with early Irish history: “Nowhere else in the world has so
widespread a conversion been accomplished with so little bloodshed. Had there ever
been anything like it before in the history of Christendom? Perhaps only the mass
conversions of the Teutonic tribes in the fifth and sixth centuries. [ . . . ] In character,
the conversion of Mexico was perhaps more like that of Ireland in the fifth century.
There, as in Mexico, a monk-bishop, Saint Patrick, organized a whole country by
monastic missions, a country which, like Mexico, but unlike the rest of Europe, had
never been subject to Roman civilization” (51).
32. My discussion of medieval Spanish theater is indebted to the scholarly com-
mentary of Dr. Michael Agnew, which is in turn informed by the collective work of
Carmen Torroja Menéndez, Ana María Álvarez Pellitero, and María Carmen Rivas
Palas, Teatro en Toledo en el siglo XV. Auto de la Pasión de Alonso del Campo. Anejo
35. Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 1977.
33. Robert Ricard points out that although El juicio final represents one of the
earliest formal productions of missionary theater, it was anticipated by two works that,
according to him, were both quite primitive: “The two oldest plays that we are aware
of are the work of Franciscans: Fray Luis de Fuensalida and Fray Andrés de Olmos.
[ . . . ] They seem to have been exceedingly rudimentary, as far as their theatrical
technique was concerned: simple dialogues in the Indian language between the Holy
Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel” (La conquista espiritual de México 305). Many
per formances would follow this first documented dramatic per formance in New
Spain. Due to limits of space, in my examination, I will comment only upon certain
aspects of El juicio final and another play performed a few years later (1539) in the cen-
ter of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, although its original manuscript has been lost. Fernando
Horcasitas has mentioned another dramatic work entitled La batalla de los salvajes (The
Battle of the Savages) (Horcasitas, El Teatro náhuatl: Épocas novohispana y moderna
499–504) and its relation to Itzmiquilpan’s mural paintings, a relationship that will be
considered later. Also worthy of mention is Louise M. Burkhart’s meticulous study
entitled Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico in which she
analyzes a Nahua play only identified in 1986 and which, according to her investiga-
tions, was written by an Indian scholar around 1592, approximately seventy years after
the conquest.
34. The supreme importance of Mexico’s primitive universities—not only as far as
the education of Indian nobility (pipiltin) was concerned but also with regard to the
Franciscans’ evangelic vision—is summarized in the words of Miguel Ángel Fernán-
dez, who comments, in La Jerusalén indiana, on the activities carried out at the first
Franciscan school, founded shortly after their arrival in Mexico-Tenochtitlan: “The
influence and wisdom of San José de los Naturales lay in the wholeness and extent of
its educational program, because its strategically profitable trades would allow for the
possibility of the City of God in the Americas: singers and stonemasons, artists and
artisans, mural painters and bell founders, scribes and bookbinders for the books of
the mestizo Utopia” (212). This citation also underscores the importance of the con-
cept of Utopia and the influence of the writings of Augustine of Hippo with regard to
the development of the Franciscan enterprise in the Americas. I will take this point
up again in my analysis of the Franciscan play El juicio final, which was iconographi-
cally reproduced a few decades later by tlacuilos under the guidance of the Augustin-
ians of the monastery at Actopan.
35. Fernando Horcasitas points out that the subject matter of this work, the first to
be documented in New Spain, is one that possesses a long history in medieval Eu-
rope: “The Last Judgment was the favorite subject of Medieval theater and evidence
of its popularity can still be found on the façades of several European cathedrals. By
the year 1160, the Antichristus was performed in Germany, in Latin. It required the
collaboration of numerous actors and it could be staged only in a large space, probably
in the presbytery of a church” (El Teatro náhuatl 62).
36. The manuscript copy of the Nexcuitilmáchiotl motenehua Juicio Final (Exem-
plum Called Last Judgment), housed in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, is
dated 1678, but there are reasons to believe that the text refers to the play performed
in 1533, since it is faithful to contemporary descriptions and has a primitive structure
linking it to the aforementioned medieval per formances dedicated to the same sub-
ject. Although he recognizes the enormous lack of a systematic textual analysis,
James Lockhart also believes that most of these copies (such as that of El juicio final)
are reasonably reliable: “A great deal of systematic textual research remains to be
done, but my preliminary conclusion is that the extant versions of the plays, nearly all
from Stage 3 and some specifically written down as late as 1760, are in the main rea-
sonably faithful copies of material originating in Stage 2, predominantly before the
end of the sixteenth century” (The Nahuas after the Conquest 408).
37. In her monograph “La demonología en la obra gráfica de fray Diego Valadés”
(Demonology in the Graphic Work of Fray Diego Valadés), in Iconología y sociedad:
Arte colonial hispanoamericano. Actas del XLIV Congreso Internacional de Americani-
stas, Elena Estrada de Gerlero argues that although some of these engravings have
retained the syncretism of the images produced, surely, by an Indian tlacuilo, the use
of these canvases—or other similar objects—has its origin in medieval Europe:
“Therefore, within this system, the ancient precept of the Church is apparent: the im-
age is not only used as an object of veneration, but also as a didactical resource; a
precept developed in the second Council of Nicaea and brought up again during the
Catholic reform movement, both before and after Trent. Therefore, the novelty of the
system applied in New Spain to indoctrinate the Indians is to be found not in the use
of images, but by the interchangeable or easily transported canvases, which were ideal
for travelling and open air preaching in the courtyards of monasteries, in places near
the open chapel or the processional chapels” (82). However, in New Spain, these forms
were particularly useful, because they structurally and formally reflected the religious
universe and all its components in a manner that resembled Indian codex.
38. Thus we may apply Lockhart’s theories regarding “double mistaken identity”
to a combined iconographic and representative phenomenon, such as the one pre-
sented in the origin and development of missionary theater and mural painting, owing
to the way in which several European symbols were reinvented once they were subject
to an Indian interpretation. Its product is preserved in the grottesco painting to be
found in nearly all monasteries built in New Spain throughout the sixteenth century.
39. At this point it should be clarified that the term “open chapel,” among others,
was coined by art historian Manuel Toussaint. This neologism substitutes the term
“Indian chapel,” used by the same friars who sponsored their construction. Later I
will enumerate the diverse (morphological) types of the open chapel, because their
form changes considerably throughout the four decades during which they were de-
signed, built, and used.
40. Othón Arróniz, in Teatro de evangelización en Nueva España, considers the
originality of this dramatic per formance and comes to an interesting conclusion:
“Compared with the plays that will immediately follow, the Juicio displays a lack of
resources in the psychological handling of its characters, which seems to originate,

not in a dramatic model, but in a religious text. In a certain way, it’s only a dialogical
sermon. [ . . . ] It’s a visual warning that shamelessly concludes by presenting a priest,
at the end of the play, in order to make the religious message even clearer” (28).
41. Othón Arróniz also comments on another play of this kind, La toma de Je-
rusalén (The Capture of Jerusalem), also known as Los festejos de Tlaxcala (The Feasts
at Tlaxcala): “These first religious plays staged in Tlaxcala in 1538, doubtlessly trans-
ferred from the original Spanish into the Indian language, are clear expressions of a
theater which wants to separate itself from the subjection imposed by popular taste for
dances and songs. It is theater in the traditional sense, the one it will take on from the
middle of the sixteenth century and whose weight and gravitational axis will be found
in the value of the word. They are no longer ‘exemplum,’ such as El juicio final by Olmos,
destined to frighten unwilling natives. They are biblical tales of the Annunciation to
the Holy Virgin, the Visitation of Saint Isabel, etc., good-natured scenes, sprinkled
with familiar and even comical passages” (Arróniz, Teatro de evangelización en Nueva
España). However, as Ricard points out, this performance was not entirely dramatic, as
it was more of a spectacle: “In order to celebrate the ten-year truce signed by Charles V
and Francis I, there were also great celebrations in Tlaxcala, in 1539. In Mexico [City],
the Spaniards had staged La toma de Roma (The Capture of Rome), while, in Tlax-
cala, the Indians had staged La toma de Jerusalén (The Capture of Jerusalem). That
was on the day of Corpus Christi. It was a spectacular pantomime, rather than a reli-
gious play strictly speaking” (Ricard, La conquista espiritual de México 307).
Chapter 2
1. The phrase “spiritual conquest” was coined by Toribio de Benavente (Moto-

linia) and revived by Robert Ricard in the twentieth century; his homonymous work
is quoted throughout.
2. Louise Burkhart, in Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial
Mexico, considers that the author of the missionary play Miércoles santo (Ash Wednes-
day), likewise written in the sixteenth century by an anonymous author, may have
been an Indian, “undoubtedly a pious Christian educated by Franciscan friars, rea-
sonably literate in Spanish, and possessing knowledge of things of the Church. He was
someone the friars trusted to produce doctrinally sound transcriptions of Christian
texts. [ . . . ] His recasting of a Spanish text reveals how distant from European con-
ceptions and sensibilities even the most Christianizing Nahua mind could be” (6).
3. Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta contributes a personal anecdote concerning this
matter, recalling how he took one of the books made by the Indian scribes back to
Spain: “And the monks helped them a lot to become scribes, because they constantly
employed them to write books and treatises which they composed or copied from
Latin or Romance (Spanish) into their own languages. When I went to Spain, in the
year 1570, I took with me the book Contemptus mundi, translated into the Mexican
language, written in an Indian’s own hand, which was so well-formed, even and gra-
cious, that no block letter could have pleased the eye more.” See Mendieta, Historia
eclesiástica indiana: A Franciscan’s View of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.
4. In an investigation still in progress, Elena Estrada de Gerlero documents the
presence and influence that models based on European treatises on calligraphy, such
as Goefroy Tory’s Champfleury (Paris, 1529) and Juan de Yciar’s Ortografía básica
(Zaragoza, 1548), had on the first works printed in New Spain.
5. John McAndrew, in The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth- Century Mexico, casts
a glimmer of light on the identity of Valadés, New Spain’s first-known mestizo friar. As
the son of a Spanish soldier married to a native woman of Tlaxcala, his family tree
recalls that of another important writer from the colonial period, Inca Garcilaso de la
Vega, whose paternal grandfather was also a famed soldier and courtier and whose
father was a member of the Spanish nobility, while his mother was an Inca princess:
“The first mestizo friar of whom there is record was Diego Valadés, grandson of a
fighter of Moors, son of a Conquistador father and probably a Tlaxcaltecan mother.
Fray Diego, an Observant, was the first Mexican to have a book published in Europe,
where he spent many years in important ecclesiastical positions. His book, Rhetorica
Christiana (Perugia, 1579), contains the first printed firsthand account of the evange-
lization of Mexico, for that of Gómara (1552) was not firsthand and those of the other
great chroniclers were not printed until later even though some, such as Motolinia’s
(1538–1542), were written considerably earlier. Once a pupil and then presumably
some sort of secretary of Fray Pedro de Gante, Fray Diego may likely have owed his
ordination (ca. 1549) to his patron’s special influence” (42).
6. Several investigators have correctly pointed out that this school, along with the
telpochcalli and calmecac of Nahua society, where young plebeian and nobles, respec-
tively, learned the essential elements of their cultural tradition, shared a similar orga-
nization and educational program.
7. In his essential study entitled Arte colonial de México (Mexican Colonial Art),
Manuel Toussaint compiles existing documents concerning the legal situation of In-
dian painters (tlacuilos) and their Spanish equivalents. Among other relevant data, he
points out that the ecclesiastical authorities themselves were responsible for examin-
ing both Spanish and Indian painters: “The ecclesiastical authorities, gathered in the
First Council in 1555, decided, according to the Constituciones Sinodales (Synodal
Constitutions), published in 1556 by the famed Juan Pablos, that no Spanish or Indian
painter would be allowed to paint images or altarpieces without having been previ-
ously examined by the Church’s ecclesiastical judges. Previously, Viceroy Luis de
Velasco had given orders that Indian painters were to be examined; now, with these
new provisions, painting fell into the hands of the Church, because, although it cer-
tainly had the right to watch over the propriety of the images, such a wide-ranging
provision as the one dictated by the First Council, subordinated painting to ecclesias-
tical authorities. [ . . . ] The first decrees for painters and gilders were proclaimed in
the City of Mexico, on August 9, 1557. [ . . . ] Regardless of the administrative and re-
ligious requirements included in all guild decrees, there are also technical require-
ments which indicate a great advance in the art of painting, because there were at
least enough artists capable of meeting those requirements: painting in fresco and in
oil, drawing nude and dressed models, having a knowledge of perspective, and being
proficient in that decoration which was known in Europe as grottesco and which in New
Spain was called “pintura de romano” (Roman-style painting)” (66).
8. Toussaint defines the term de romano in a concise manner: “The painting made
by the Indian to decorate temples and monasteries is called ‘de romano’: friezes and
bands with plant motifs and medallions or recesses with scenes from Christ’s Passion or
figures of saints. Sometimes, the whole building is decorated that way; in others, the
paintings are concentrated in certain points, particularly in the cloister” (Arte colonial
de México 19). Diego Angulo Íñiguez provides specific information about this theory
but argues that Indian participation was more extensive than had been believed for
centuries: “During these first fifty years of architectural work, the Indian aesthetic
contribution must have been essentially restricted to the decorative aspect, and, even
if thus restricted, what we can state with some certainty is that it’s less than it should
have been, particularly as far as composition is concerned. [ . . . ] Defining what be-
longs to the Indian population and what belongs to the great European mass of im-
provised sculptors and engravers, which in view of the lack of specialized personnel,
worked on those buildings, is a difficult task, and it can only be carried out with re-
gard to nonexistent graphic information, which attempts, above all, to discover the
use of pre- Columbian motifs in the monuments.” See Historia del Arte hispanoameri-
cano, pp. 139– 40. Fortunately, during the past fifty years, much graphic information
has been unearthed (such as the images discovered at Actopan and Itzmiquilpan),
and this has provided scholars with a more precise approach to the subject of New
Spain’s syncretic art.
9. José Moreno Villa baptized the art made by Mexican Indians under Spanish
dominion with the Nahuatl neologism tequitqui. His classification is partially based
on a similar phenomenon that has its roots in the Hispanic-Muslim world, a result
of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula: “In order to invent the term tequitqui,
we have to bear in mind in the first place the meaning of the word Mudéjar
(Mudechan). It means tributary. The Mudéjar was a Muslim who did not convert
but who remained a vassal of the Christian monarchs during the Reconquista. Here,
the Indians were the vassals and tributaries.” See La escultura colonial mexicana,
p. 16.
10. In a personal communication, Elena Estrada de Gerlero pointed out that the
content of the “Libro de Vicios y virtudes” (“Book of Vices and Virtues”) has many
parallels with the “Ordenanzas para pintores de 1557” (“Decree for Painters of 1557”),
with the Confessionario mayor en lengua mexicana y castellana (Major Confessional
in the Mexican and Castilian Languages) by Alonso de Molina (1569), with the dances
of artisans bearing their insignia (still performed today in some towns in Michoacán),
and with texts from the period that draw from a work ethic based on the postulates set
forth by Saint Buenaventura (1221–1274) in his treatise “De Reductione Artium ad
Theologiam” (“The Reduction of Sciences to Theology”), in which the mechanical
arts are considered a permissible path toward redemption.
11. Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta records that two Franciscans were the first to
learn Nahuatl, and he documents their involvement in the translation of “the main
points of Christian doctrine.” It is not surprising to discover that the same friars are also
mentioned among New Spain’s first playwrights, and that their Nahuatl plays were
used for purposes of evangelization. Mendienta categorically states, “Christian doc-
trine was also taught in the Indian language; the first to learn were Fray Luis de
Fuensalida and Fray Francisco Jiménez, who afterwards composed a manual dedi-
cated to it. And with their intelligence and with the help of their most skillful disci-
ples, who already knew much about matters of faith, they translated the main points
of Christian doctrine into the Mexican language and arranged them in a very amus-
ing plainsong that attracted people to learn the doctrine.” See Mendieta, Historia
eclesiástica indiana 218.
12. Estrada de Gerlero points out that Testera could not have been the first mis-
sionary to use an interpreter, and that this technique was much earlier, having been
employed by San Vicente Ferrer (1350–1419).
13. Toussaint states that, indeed, mural painting should be considered New Spain’s
first artistic representation, and he mentions the Franciscan monastery at Cholula as
its original site. He also suggests that the significance of these primitive images is to
be found not only in their historical value but in their affinity for the Indian codex
painted on amatl: “We can still consign the most ancient mural decoration painting
in fresco: the program that decorates the cloister of the Franciscan monastery at
Cholula, which was dated 1530. It represents a scene of the Life of Saint Francis and,
along with other paintings of the same kind, it is one of the most archaic documents
in the history of our plastic arts. This is also the case of a painting located in the same
structure that represents the Mass of Saint Gregory, an example that is not only of
interest for the history of art, but also for the history of religion itself, because it
shows us what kind of instruments and precious implements were used by clergy-
men in those primitive times. The way in which all the objects and even the cha-
subles of the monks are arranged reminds us of an Indian codex” (Arte colonial de
México 66).
14. According to Miguel Ángel Fernández, the following is the most simple typol-
ogy that may be used to organize the variants found in such buildings: (1) the balcony
chapel (e.g., Acolman); (2) the one found in the caretaker’s office and has several arches
(Tlalnepantla); (3) the one with parallel naves (the Royal Chapel at Cholula); (4) a sepa-
rate building (Actopan). See La Jerusalén Indiana, p. 203.
15. In an ongoing investigation, Elena Estrada de Gerlero has found even earlier
examples of the use of pictorial canvases that would have been explained with a
pointer; a truly ancient example may be found in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History
(23–79 BC).
16. Louise Burkhart also points out: “In Spain, the dramatic potential of the [re-
ligious] festivities was first explored through the creation of tableaux made with wooden
figures, representing scenes from Christian narratives. These were placed on carts
and dragged or carried through the streets in the manner of parade floats” (Holy
Wednesday 17).
17. This is an example of how certain aspects of James Lockhart’s cultural linguis-
tic theory (new philology) may be applied to an iconographic context, because their
incorporation into the evangelistic context was made easier by the coexistence of these
canvases in both Spanish and Nahua cultures, while the chances that they would be
reinterpreted by Indian neophytes increased. In this way, the pictorial object becomes
something that for the Spaniards was limited to the representation of the most ele-
mentary aspects of their religion, while their consequent meaning and associations
were at times quite different for the Nahuas.
18. According to Emilio Valton’s research, Giovanni Paoli, an agent of Juan Crom-
berger’s Sevillian press, arrived to New Spain in 1539, a date established through a con-
tract that was signed on June 12 of the same year: “Juan Pablos (Juan Pablo)—Giovanni
Paoli—native of Lombardy, from the city of Brescia and who worked as a craftsman in
the Cromberger Press at Seville, when, on June 12, 1539, he signed the famous con-
tract with Juan Cromberger, by means of which he agreed to ‘go to New Spain, to
Mexico City, for a period of ten years, serving Cromberger, to have a house and press
to print books.’ ” See Impresos mexicanos del siglo XVI (incunables americanos), p. 37. As
an example of the importance of the printed book and particularly of the engravings
that they often included, John McAndrew mentions the case of the creator of the
extraordinary columns found at the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo, pointing
out that: “The hypertrophy of scale [of the columns] suggests that his source lay not in
any real architecture that he had seen, but rather in some engraving of architecture
that did not make the original scale clear to him. Perhaps he was influenced by a chap-
ter in Diego de Sagredo’s Medidas del romano (1526, 1539, 1542, 1543, and later), pro-
vocatively entitled ‘The Formation of Columns called Monstrous, Candelabras, and
Balusters,’ which he could have read without having been hampered by the many il-
lustrations that were often found on ancient buildings though not in ancient treatises.
[ . . . ] This, and the miscellany of other decorative elements, tame and wild—the
baluster, the different chains, the ropes, the bleeding wounds, the monograms, the
instrument-bearing angels—most probably came from pictures in books shown to
manually competent but unlettered carvers” (323).
19. According to McAndrew, Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz returned from Spain in
1573 with seventy boxes of books, all of which were destined for Augustinian libraries.
One should not be surprised by this friar’s industriousness, for the Augustinians were
among the most educated members of the religious orders that arrived to New Spain
and were most concerned with theological and doctrinal matters (36).
20. McAndrew provides a precise example of how this dramatic tradition sur-
vived, and it is to be found in a procession that was still represented in Oaxaca in the
middle of the twentieth century: “This custom of encuentro (meeting), said to persist
elsewhere in Oaxaca, is a remnant of an old procession and play, with pauses at the
posas surviving intact. [ . . . ] Perhaps it is more than coincidence that the typical
atrium had four posas and the typical ideal of a sixteenth- century town included four
barrios, heirs of the four equivalent pre- conquest calpullis (282).
21. Some Flemish painters were drawn to New Spain, owing to the great employ-
ment opportunities that were offered in the enormous public works inherent in the
construction and ornamentation of the new city. Simon Pereyns, creator of the great
altarpiece that still exists in Huejotzingo, was one of them (McAndrew 142).
22. In 1537, Pope Paul III declared the Sublimis Deus and Veritas Ipsa bulls, both
of which permanently established that the American Indians were sons of Adam,
humans, and therefore rational beings. These bulls were enthusiastically approved by
a synod of Mexican and provincial bishops in 1546.
23. As has been previously pointed out, in the 1930s, Manuel Toussaint coined
the term “open chapel,” and since then it has been employed by most scholars in the
field, although the first chroniclers (including Motolinia) referred to them as “Indian
chapels.” Likewise, John McAndrew summarizes the complex history and gradual
development of the processional chapel in his aforementioned study. Essentially, it
was some sort of canopy that was used to enhance a small and unimpressive altar, like
many of the first altars built in New Spain: “The posa is an architectural canopy
which served the same purpose as the traditional ciborium or umbralacrum: to provide
emphasis and dignity to the small and visually insignificant altar, unexpandable be-
yond table size. The posa is the outdoor equivalent to the indoor ciborium, usually
also made of stone. There is one difference: a ciborium consists of a canopy upon col-
umns, while a posa is a small building with a top supported by walls, cut away by big
openings though they may be” (McAndrew 298).
24. McAndrew (a disciple of Toussaint) also establishes several parallels between

the Mexican teocalli and the design of New Spain’s monastic complexes, pointing out
that the friars planted trees around the monasteries’ courtyards, an arrangement that
perhaps reflected the tradition of planting trees in the courtyards of Tenochtitlan’s
main temple and Netzahualcoyotl’s gardens: “Possibly something besides the common-
sense reasons for planting ‘streets’ of trees around the atrios contributed to the popu-
larity of the scheme: there was a pre- conquest precedent for it. There were rows of
trees around the courtyard of the principal temple at Tenochtitlan. One of the hand-
somest features of the famous cypress gardens of Prince Netzahualcoyotl at Texcoco
was a hollow square of huge ahuehuetes (‘old man’ cypress) and nearby was a similar
hollow circle, each making a pleasant shady walk” (293). With regard to chapels and,
in par ticular, processional chapels, he points out that Sahagún had documented a
similar phenomenon in Nahua religious life: “Like the atrios in which they stood, the
posas had a pre- conquest precedent, though not so important and definite as that of
the atrio. Father Sahagún found that by the great teocalli of Tenochtitlan, the Indians
‘made many offerings in the houses called calpulli, which were like the churches of
the barrios,’ and that here the inhabitants of the barrio would gather to make their
offerings. (The word calpulli could refer either to the ward or its chapel). These calpulli
shrines were located in the big patio, set around its edge. Father Torquemada noted the
same arrangement” (302).
25. According to the notes made by the chroniclers of the first period of evangeli-
zation, up to twenty thousand souls could be converted in a single day of preaching.
For his part, Fray Martín de Valencia stressed that each of the twelve Franciscans had
baptized more than 100,000 Indians, while Bishop Zumárraga believed that more
than 1,500,000 Indians had been converted by 1531 (McAndrew 50).
26. McAndrew, as well as Lockhart, warns that we should not exaggerate the simi-
larities between pre-Hispanic buildings and those that on many occasions were built
on top of them: “The importance of similarities between some pre- conquest religious
beliefs and activities and others in Christianity must not be overestimated as an ele-
ment in facilitating conversion. The friars played such similarities down more often
than up from fear they might confuse the Indians or, worse, make it possible for them
to accept the outer forms of the new religion while concealing inner allegiances to the
old. None of the similarities was more than superficial, vague, or coincidental: stories
of a flood and a sort of Eve, the presentation of a newborn in the temple for baptism
with water, a form of confession and penance, belief in life after death, acceptance of
a hierarchy of priests and monasteries. [ . . . ] Nevertheless, though not exploited by
the friars, the similarities must have facilitated acceptance if not the understanding
of the Christian ideas of after-life, damnation, heaven, and penance, despite the
dangers of confusion and heresy which might follow” (61).
27. McAndrew confirms this hypothesis in his aforementioned study of New
Spain’s open chapels: “Although there may have been such exceptions, and unknown
others, the conclusions are clear: the open chapel was a regular feature of the archi-
tecture of the Great Conversion, and nearly every monastery had one” (348).
28. According to the diagram of this Franciscan monastery, made by Diego Mu-
ñoz Camargo and included in his Relaciones geográficas de Tlaxcala (Account of
Tlaxcala’s Geography) (1585), there were two open chapels within the grounds that
the architectural complex occupies to this day—one that faced the courtyard (now
destroyed) and another one, located on a lower level; both were octagonal. Historians
of New Spain agree that in his description Motolinia refers to the first (destroyed)
chapel. In the time of Muñoz Camargo, the chapel that Motolinia called “Belén”
(“Bethlehem”) was known as the chapel of Saint Joseph. The second (and still stand-
ing) chapel of Indians is described in detail by Muñoz Camargo as the chapel located
in the middle of the stairs leading to the courtyard “under the cypress trees” (McAn-
drew 52).
29. At this point, it should be noticed that, just like Diego Muñoz Camargo, he
had followed the diverse charters sent by the Spanish Crown, such as the “Royal Li-
cense to the Court of Mexico, requesting accounts of the geography, which describe
in detail the qualities of the land, its demography, urban centers, and hydrography, as
well as reports about the flora and fauna, and news about pre-Hispanic history,” dated
1533. See Francisco de Solano and Pilar Ponce, eds., Cuestionarios para la formación
de las relaciones geográficas de Indias (Siglos XVI– XIX) (Questionnaires for the Devel-
opment of Accounts of the Geography of the Indies (Sixteenth/Nineteenth Centuries).
30. A detailed study of early construction in New Spain may be found in a chapter
written by Elena Isabel Estrada de Gerlero entitled “Diferentes aspectos de la con-
strucción ilustrados en el Códice Florentino” (“Different Aspects of Building Illus-
trated in the Florentine Codex”).
31. It should be pointed out that although these mural paintings date back to the
middle of the sixteenth century, there must have been other iconographic representa-
tions, in par ticular, pictorial canvases and flower mosaics, that have not survived.
Therefore, based on the physical remains of this ancient artistic tradition, I propose
that the origin of these Mexican artistic expressions is to be found in a context that,
strictu sensu, is the result of a second stage in New Spain’s iconographic develop-
ment. Since this was the stage that survived, it is reasonable to assume that this
would have had a greater influence in the subsequent development of New Spain’s
syncretic iconography.
32. In her book Painted Walls of Mexico, Emily Edwards has documented remains
of mural paintings in almost one hundred of New Spain’s monasteries built during
the sixteenth century. In the center of Mexico, remains of mural paintings may be
found in the monasteries at Tlaxcala, Tizatlán, Huejotzingo, Cholula, Tepeaca,
Cuauhtinchan, Tecamachalco, Puebla, Acolman, Tepetlazotoc, Culhuacan, Tlal-
manalco, Ozumba, and Mexico City. In south- central Mexico, mural paintings may
still be found in the monasteries at Cuernavaca, Oaxtepec, Tlaquiltenango, Tlayaca-
pan, Atlatlahuacan, Matamoros, Yanhuitlán, Cuilapan, Teiticpac, Etla, Oaxaca, and
Tlacochahuaya. In southeastern Mexico, remains of mural paintings are to be found in
San Cristóbal de las Casas, while in the north- central region, examples are to be found
in Tepeapulco, Epazoyucan, Atotonilco, Actopan, and Itzmiquilpan. In the high
plateaus of northwestern- central Mexico, evidence of mural paintings has been
discovered in Xinacantepec and Malinalco, while to the west mural paintings are to
be found in Charo, Tzintzuntzan, Tupátaro, Yuririapúndaro, and Cuitzeo.
33. Toussaint adds: “We may state that the wisdom of the painters in fresco and the
ignorance of sixteenth-century friars contributed to the preservation of these artistic
monuments. [ . . . ] We should notice that the Indians create an almost elementary
fresco painting, which may not be compared to the art of the great mural paintings of
the Renaissance. There is no absolute polychromy; only two or three colors are used,
along with superficial shading. However, there is no doubt that this is painting al
fresco, based on the chroniclers’ testimonies, governmental decrees, as well as the per-
sistence of these paintings” (Arte colonial de México 20–21).
34. In his study, Reyes-Valerio includes a table with the following title that is not
reproduced here: “Tabulación de edades y años de estudio (una hipótesis)” (“Tabula-
tion of ages and years of study (a hypothesis)”). The subtitle explains the details of
these calculations: “From 1505, there is a record of the children entering the calmecac
and their studies are considered to have been interrupted in 1520 or 1521, due to the
Hispanic invasion” (El pintor de conventos 39). His analysis suggests that, at the time
the Spaniards arrived, and at least until 1526, there were many calmecac graduates
who might have contributed to the construction and ornamentation of churches,
monasteries, chapels, and other early constructions. In 1526, for example, a student
who had been enrolled when he was five years old would be twenty-six, and therefore
could have had a long career at the ser vice of the friars.
35. According to Miguel Ángel Fernández, the thesis of the theologian Gersón
regarding a universal Catholic church, but with a certain level of regional autonomy,
seems to have been one of the major goals of some of the monks who settled in New
Spain (La Jerusalén Indiana 125).
36. Prudentius (348– 405 AC) coined the term psychomachia to describe the war
between vices and virtues in his allegorical poem of the same name. Throughout nine
hundred verses, the poet describes this human conflict in terms of a military battle,
thus joining the epic tradition that had been established by Virgil and his Aeneid. In
his version, the Christian faith is attacked by and defeats idolatry, cheered by thou-
sands of Christian martyrs. Some scholars of Itzmiquilpan’s pictorial program have
used this term, not because this monastery’s mural paintings share Prudentius’s con-
ception of Christian virtues, but because the modern definition of this term refers to
an allegorical representation in which human virtues, represented by individuals,
engage in a battle with vices, which are also personified.
37. Additionally, a common factor in every missionary enterprise has been the
training and employment of new converts to build and decorate sacred buildings, this
mainly for the purpose of strengthening the process of conversion (personal commu-
nication with Elena Estrada de Gerlero).
38. Personal communication with Elena Estrada de Gelero.
Chapter 3
1. Through a statistical analysis included in Constantino Reyes-Valerio’s mono-

graph El pintor de conventos: Los murales del siglo XVI en la Nueva España (The
Painter of Monasteries: Mural Painting in Sixteenth- Century New Spain), one may
glean, among other relevant data, that approximately 207,400 square meters of the
walls of New Spain’s monasteries were whitewashed, and that figure does not include
all the vaults, walls, or chapels (19). Obviously only a fragment of those surfaces was
used to display the images that have been analyzed here, but these numbers provide
an idea of the enormous amount of (Indian) labor that was required to whitewash
those buildings, an ideal preparation for their subsequent adornment with “de ro-
mano,” or grottesco, painting, which was frequently the product of Mexican tlacuilos.
2. For a more detailed study, see George Kubler’s article “On the Colonial Ex-
tinction of the Motifs of Pre- Columbian Art.”
3. Elena Estrada de Gerlero points out: “The inclusion of profane themes within
religious grounds has enjoyed a long history in Western art. In Itzmiquilpan, for
philosophical, social, and historical reasons, the Augustinians used an allegorical
subject matter of European origin, which they adapted to current circumstances.” See
“El friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan,” p. 16.
4. See Serge Gruzinski, La colonización de lo imaginario: Sociedades indígenas y
occidentalización en el México español; original French version, La colonisation de
l’imaginaire, Sociétés indigènes et occidentalisation dans le Mexique espagnol, XVIe–
XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque des Histoires, 1988), 374.
5. Erwin Panofsky conceived and developed his mode of iconological analysis in
his book Studies in Iconology. This analysis constitutes a tripartite interpretation based
on pre-iconographic observations, that is, those of a descriptive-formalist nature, and
a limited iconographic analysis, that is, an exegetical analysis (hence its relationship
to literature); they are then united in order to extrapolate the subject matters and con-
cepts that reflect the ideas and essential trends of the human mind (iconology). See
Panofsky, Studies in Iconology.
6. It should be pointed out that pre-Hispanic artists—such as those of ancient
Egypt, for example—developed their own way to represent space and distance within
the pictorial plane, a technique that did not match the techniques in perspective de-
veloped in northern Europe and Italy, respectively.
7. José Pascual Buxó coined this neologism in order to describe the mythical-
discursive content of some of the mural painting programs in question.
8. In no way is this phenomenon limited to a single artistic genre; rather, it con-
stitutes only an aspect of an expression or a trend deeply rooted in the human mind,
and therefore in universal culture.
9. “As in painting, so in poetry.” Although this phrase has been taken out of
context—in reality, Horace was observing that, like with a painting, sometimes it is
also worth contemplating a poem more than once—I have invoked its out- of- context
(and common) interpretation.
10. I refer both to European and American cultures. Aesthetically, it may be
pointed out that Albrecht Dürer, among others, admired and was astonished by some
objects of pre-Hispanic (Mexica) art.
11. Although the Spanish conquest had many medieval aspects, as shall be seen
in the next chapter, the mentality of many of the friars was rather typical of the Re-
naissance being that they were fervent believers in the ideas of Erasmus and Thomas
More, among others. See Antonio Tovar, Lo medieval en la Conquista y otros ensayos
americanos (Medieval Elements of the Conquest and Other American Essays).
12. In her article “El friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan” (“Itzmiquilpan’s Monu-
mental Frieze”), Elena Estrada de Gerlero states: “Particularly after minerals were
discovered in Zacatecas in 1546, the Spaniards realized that they needed to protect
the mule trains that carried supplies to the mine camps and safeguard them on their
way back bearing loads of precious metals. The region was inhabited by the Chi-
chimec who were essentially nomadic. Owing to their bellicose nature, their skills as
horsemen, and their tendency to carry out surprise attacks, subjugating them was a
difficult task. They were trained to be warriors since they were children and they were
famous for their use of bow and arrow. The hatred of the Chichimecs and Huastecos
towards the Spaniards was justified by the way in which the latter had abused the
Aristotelian concept of just war, capturing thousands of Indians and turning them
into slaves. Almost every monastery-fortress founded in the war zone with the aim of
pacifying them had been attacked, and even some located further away from the bor-
der had suffered the same fate. In 1570, the Pame [Indians] attacked Yuriria, Ucareo,
Jilotepec, and Itzmiquilpan.” See “El Friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan,” p. 17.
13. In his monograph “Sangre para el sol: Las pinturas murales del siglo XVI en la
parroquia de Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo” (“Blood for the Sun: Sixteenth- Century Mural
Paintings in the Parish of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo”), originally published in Memorias
de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia (Annals of the Academy of Mexican History),
David Charles Wright Carr notes that “Ixmiquilpan was an important Otomi town in
the northern Valley of El Mezquital, near the border between the Otomi and the
Pame territories, in the northern border of Middle- American civilization. Shortly
after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Pedro Rodríguez became the first encomendero
of Ixmiquilpan and Tlacintla, a nearby town. Juan Gómez de Almazán and Juan Bello
were two other encomenderos of Ixmiquilpan. In 1535, this encomienda was divided:
Tlacintla was given to the Crown and Ixmiquilpan assigned to Bello. Ixmiquilpan’s
inhabitants, whose lands were irrigated by the Tula river, paid tribute with wheat, corn,
beans, chile, and fabric made of maguey fiber. Years later, this encomienda was inher-
ited by Bello’s son-in-law, Gil González de Ávila, who was beheaded in 1566, for his
involvement in Martín Cortés’ conspiracy against the control of the Spanish king.
From that year on, Ixmiquilpan paid tribute to the Crown.” The Spanish version of this
article may be found at http://www.arqueomex.com/S2N3nIXMIQUILPAN73.html.
14. In Art of Colonial Latin America, Gauvin Alexander Bailey notes that recent
research has linked the style of Actopan’s mural paintings to that of the (Indian)
graduates from the previously mentioned school of Pedro de Gante at San José de los
Naturales. The art historian points out that “in the stair shaft there is a scene with
portraits of Friar Martín de Acevedo, who might have developed the mural painting
program, along with images of the Indian nobles Juan Inica Atocpa and Don Pedro
Izcuicuitlapilco, who were also patrons of the church. The last scene, in which the
Indians are represented with the same honors as the Spanish friar, reminds us that the
missions were the result of a collective effort that soon became a source of pride for
the Indian community” (249).
15. The English version is found at http:// history.hanover.edu/texts/trent /trentall
.html.
16. Olivier Debroise categorically states: “The mural paintings at San Miguel
Itzmiquilpan are the sole extant visual examples which were carried out with total
independence from native or imported canons. This is regarding their originality
while at the same time invoking the possibility of an art that is completely and defini-
tively typical of New Spain; such an art has been and is still being denied.” See
“Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades en tránsito: El caso de los murales de San Miguel
Itzmiquilpan,” p. 155.
17. In the following chapter, it will be seen how another Franciscan, Andrés de
Olmos, adapted a Spanish treatise originally designed to stamp out witchcraft in the
Basque Country in order to fight a devil that, in New Spain, had the same attributes
as the pre-Hispanic gods.
18. It should be pointed out that La escala espiritual para llegar al cielo (The Spiri-
tual Ladder to Reach Heaven) was the first book printed in New Spain (1537). It was
written by Saint John Climacus and was translated into Castilian by Fray Juan de
Magdalena, one of Itzmiquilpan’s monks. Therefore, it may be seen that the residents
of this far- off monastery, located on the Chichimec frontier, were indeed quite sophis-
ticated, a quality that would indeed have allowed for the complex recasting of Indian
myths and beliefs with those of a clear Christian origin.
19. Elena Estrada de Gerlero remarks: “Some historians with an interest in
Itzmiquilpan’s iconographic phenomenon used to think that the Conquest was al-
ready far off and that the Indian militia would not have reappeared there with such
magnificence. However, we must remember that the expansion and conquest process
continued in the north of the territory throughout the sixteenth century” (“El friso
monumental de Itzmiquilpan” 16).
20. The tlacuilos of the time might not have had any direct knowledge of these
paintings, but they certainly could have admired the numerous paintings on walls—
most of them lost to time—that once had adorned Mexico-Tenochtitlan and other
cities in the valley of Mexico, such as the “painted houses” mentioned by Bernal Díaz
del Castillo in his Verdadera historia de la conquista de la Nueva España.
21. Olivier Debroise supports this notion within the precise context of Itzmiquil-
pan’s paintings, pointing out that “Unlike the Augustinian mural painting programs
that we currently know and which are almost always found in the inner sanctum
of the monasteries—that is, in the spaces devoted to the friars’ private spiritual
lives, in the cloisters, corridors, refectories, and chapterhouses—this program was
painted in the church’s public space. Therefore, we must read it as a doctrinal tool
addressed to the civil population and compare it with other public programs, in fa-
çades and external portals, in the early ‘Indian chapels’ of the atriums. Indeed, we
find here neither images of saints, scenes of the life of Christ or the lives of the founders
of the orders, nor exaltations of the monastic life, such as we do in the chapterhouse
of the neighboring monastery at San Nicolás Actopan.” See Debroise, “Imaginario
fronterizo/Identidades en tránsito” p. 161.
22. Despite this sharp division, the members of the Indian brotherhoods had access
to the lower cloister during the celebration of certain processions and were given their
due respect, as the buildings’ corners were sometimes devoted to the burial of their
chiefs who had contributed to the building of the monastery, such as the cases that
have been documented both in Tlaxcala and in Tehuacán (Elena Estrada de Gerlero,
personal communication).
23. In that respect, Olivier Debroise points out: “Since their discovery in 1960, the
mural paintings of the church at San Miguel Itzmiquilpan have forced art historians
and historians of colonial architecture to reconsider some axiomatic ideas and truths;
indeed, the hybrid cultural content of these paintings showed a significant influence
by the Indian artists, who had been trained by Franciscan and Augustinian friars at
their art and trade schools located at San José de los Naturales (Mexico) and Tiripitío
(province of Michoacán), respectively, as well as a greater mutual understanding be-
tween the missionaries and the ethnic groups during the process of evangelization; this
phenomenon has been also verified by recent historiography” (“Imaginario fronterizo
/Identidades en tránsito” 155).
24. According to Emily Edwards, “the sinuous drawing, a familiar shape of Re-
naissance design, was obviously traced here in repeated units—the war scenes are also
repeated—sometimes backwards.” See her Painted Walls of Mexico, p. 107.
25. In a personal message, Elena Estrada de Gerlero insists that this rhythmic
repetition of the positions of the figures is a result of the Renaissance grottesco nature
of the composition, in which the units may be mirrored throughout long sections.
Even though the figures are painted with pre-Hispanic costumes, these were still in
force after the conquest, when the Indian groups that were incorporated into the Span-
ish army were given permission to keep their traditional battle regalia, as can be clearly
seen in the drawings of Muñoz Camargo and the “Canvas of Tlaxcala,” among many
other examples.
26. For more information regarding the identification of the warriors included in
this pictorial program, see the monographs of Donna Pierce; Harriet Kamm Nye; and
Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel.
27. In his “Conjeturas sobre quién pudo ser el autor” (“Conjectures upon the
Identity of the Author”), an appendix to his Guerra de los chichimecas, Luis González
Obregón points out that Gonzalo de las Casas’s manuscript might have “ended up in
the hands of Gil González de Ávila, since, as chronicler of the Indies, he must have
been provided with all types of manuscripts, and, in that case, the name which ap-
pears in our author’s book is that of the said chronicler, who additionally might have
been a relative of the González de Ávila family, friends of Gonzalo de las Casas, and
that is how he might have acquired the work.” See Gonzalo de las Casas, Guerra de
los chichimecas.
28. On this matter, Olivier Debroise remarks: “At that time, however, the Indian
painters, possibly trained at the art and trade school at Tiripitío, or perhaps Otomi
from the Itzmiquilpan district with less training than them (or, perhaps, under the
observation of the former), used the basic grottesco outline, but they freely altered its
scale, structure, and, of course, content” (“Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades en trán-
sito” 163).
29. Quoting Professor Jiménez Moreno, Elena Isabel Estrada de Gerlero points out:
“Both are high-ranking demonic figures, since they wear headdresses made of quetzal-
feathers and chalchihuite-discs. The griffon has trapped a naked, sheared figure that
clasps a human heart, a symbol of sacrifice, according to Professor Jiménez Moreno,
and wields a macana in his hand. Since the Aztecs considered that nudity was un-
comely, this naked figure must represent a Huastec or Chichimec, although only the
latter used bows and arrows. The rest of the human figures represent, according to
their dress, diverse hierarchies or orders within the Indian militia” (“El friso monu-
mental de Itzmiquilpan” 13).
30. See Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel, Ixmiquilpan (Mexico City: Dirección de Mon-
umentos Coloniales, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1961).
31. See Donna Pierce, “Identification of the Warriors in the Frescoes of Ixmiquil-
pan,” pp. 1– 4.
32. In his Apologética historia sumaria, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas also makes
reference to this celebration and mentions, although briefly, the presence of two par-
ties of Indian warriors within an “artificial” scenography: “We saw another one in
Mexico City and that was a joyful festivity that was carried out in the year 1539, in
celebration of the peace agreement between the Emperor and the King of France;
in the main square of Mexico, there were many buildings, like detachable theaters, as
tall as towers, with many sections, one on top of the other, and each one had its act
and per formance with its singers and high minstrels with shawns and sackbuts and
dulzainas and other musical instruments. . . . There were castles and a city made of
wood that was attacked by Indians from outside and defended by those inside; there
were big ships with their sails that glided through the square, as if they were upon
water, although they were on land” (vol. 2, 334, emphasis added).
Chapter 4
1. In his foundational study entitled Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Cen-

tury, George Kubler summarizes the characteristics of the early mendicants: “Orga-
nized during the religious revival of the late Middle Ages, the institutes of the
Mendicant friars all specified the practice of poverty and a return to the life of Christ
and the Apostles. Their great differences from the monastic orders of an earlier Chris-
tianity appeared in preaching activity among the urban population and in renuncia-
tion both of monastic retreat and of the wealth of secular clergy. In Mexico, their
missionary foundations and educational establishments were the center of emergent
patterns of colonial culture” (2).
2. For more information about this apocalyptic vision among Franciscan com-
munities in Mexico, see John L. Phelan’s foundational study entitled The Millennial
Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World.
3. In his study Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano (Iconography and
Iconology of the Art of New Spain), Santiago Sebastián finds a hidden message within
the previously mentioned paintings by Juan Gersón, possibly created during Olmos’s
stay at Tecamachalco: “The aforementioned program at Tecamachalco has a second
part, supported by pictorial images of the Apocalypse, likewise related with a [millen-
nialist] mentality that made references to the end of the world. It was a much valued
subject during the Middle Ages; both in Mozarabic and Romanesque art, as well as
during the fifteenth century. With regard to Tecamachalco’s church, the models were
provided by an illustrated book that came from Germany, and which was related to
the Wittenberg Bible, published in 1522” (27).
4. In his prologue to Tovar de Teresa’s La utopía mexicana del siglo XVI, lo bello, lo
verdadero y lo bueno (The Mexican Sixteenth- Century Utopia: Beauty, Truth, and Good-
ness) Octavio Paz links these kinds of theological and philosophical ideas to the mental-
ity of Mexico’s first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza: “The universalism of Antonio de
Mendoza, Vasco de Quiroga, and Juan de Zumárraga aspired to an integration of the
great exception that embodied the recently discovered continent into a great Chris-
tian and rational synthesis. Indeed, the European conscience saw America not only as
a geographical exception, but as a historical and theological one as well: another land
and humanity with strange beliefs and customs” (13).
5. Kubler categorically states: “If the Apostolic Twelve represented Cisnerian Spain,
a later group of missionaries under Juan de Zumárraga represented Erasmian thought
in Mexico. [ . . . ] Several events from [Zumárraga’s] Mexican career indicate an au-
dacious and radical policy of action, founded upon the Philosophia Christa promul-
gated by Erasmus and diffused throughout the literate world of Spain by 1525. [ . . . ]
The main documents of Zumárraga’s contact with Spanish Erasmianism are the
doctrinal books printed in Mexico under his direction and a copy of More’s Utopia
and Erasmus’ Epigrammata in his possession” (Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth
Century 9–10).
6. Historian Silvio Zavala enumerates other Utopian proposals that would follow
those articulated by Saint Augustine: “Renaissance mentality yearned for a world free
from impurity. In the field of political doctrine, this attitude’s philosophical and liter-
ary echoes may be found in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), and Campanella’s Cittá
del Sole (1637), to which we may add Joseph Hall’s Mundus Alter (1607), Bacon’s Nova
Atlantis (1627), and Harrington’s Oceana (1657).” See G. Tovar de Teresa, M. León-
Portilla, and Silvio Arturo Zavala. La utopía mexicana del siglo XVI: Lo bello, lo ver-
dadero y lo bueno, p. 69.
7. Santiago Sebastián explains that, with regard to his work, Mendieta estab-
lished “a series of parallelisms between the Bible and the reality of the Americas and
he emphasized above all the idea that the recently discovered continent would be
the seat of the future millenary kingdom; therefore, the renewal of the Church
would be possible here, in a society that would be constituted only by Indians and
Franciscans” (Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano 20). For his part, John
McAndrew postulates that the Franciscans “seem to have envisioned an ideal theo-
cratic state where they would shepherd ideally Christian Indians without any interfer-
ence from Spanish colonists, civil officials, or secular clergy. Except for the friars,
there would be no Spaniards in New Spain. In some of their writings, especially those
of Father Mendieta, a strong undertone of yearning for such a heaven on New World
earth may be perceived, not as a remote vision like St. Augustine’s City of God, but as
something real and poignantly near at hand.” See McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches
of Sixteenth- Century Mexico, p. 88.
8. For a detailed description of these princes of the underworld, see the chapter
in Fray Andrés de Olmos, entitled “De cómo el demonio desea ser honrado” (“How the
Demon Wishes to Be Honored”) in his Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios (Treatise on
Witchcraft and Sorcery).
9. This book, edited by María Sten, and entitled El teatro franciscano en la
Nueva España: Fuentes y ensayos para el estudio del teatro de evangelización en el siglo
XVI (Franciscan Theater in New Spain: Sources and Essays for the Study of Sixteenth-
Century Evangelization Theater), constitutes a valuable compilation of both historical
and recent monographs on the subject.
10. Personal message from José Pascual Buxó.
11. In her recently published book, The Pyramid under the Cross: Franciscan
Discourses of Evangelization and the Nahua Christian Subject in Sixteenth- Century
Mexico, Viviana Díaz Balsera devotes one chapter to Olmos’s El auto del juicio fi-
nal. Quoting Barry D. Sell, she observes that the original manuscript copy of El
auto del juicio final lacks any date whatsoever, and that taking into account “inter-
nal linguistic evidence, loanwords, and idiomatic usages [ . . . ] cannot have been
produced much earlier than the late seventeenth century” (65– 66). As we shall
see later, James Lockhart—whose linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Nahua
world has provided the basis for much of this study—promotes a radically different
outlook.
12. With regard to the perspective provided by an iconographic study, in his pro-
logue to Santiago Sebastián’s Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano, José Pas-
cual Buxó points out that an iconographic analysis “assumes a familiarity with specific
themes or subjects, such as the ones transmitted through literary sources”; therefore,
“the art historian must strive to accurately determine which texts are relevant in each
case,” because “from those [textual] sources, we may deduce the ‘basic principles that
underlie the choice and preservation of motifs’ ” (13–14).
13. The English version is available at http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/book
.php?book=Matthew&chapter 25&verse.
14. Juan de Grijalva, chronicler of the Augustinian order, states that the Augustin-
ians “endeavored to have [the Indians] learn the mechanical trades that were not
known here, sending them to Mexico, and assigning them masters, particularly those
that were needed in town; and thus the carpenters who work in marquetry and inlays,
and the embroiderers from all the towns under our administration are now famous.
[ . . . ] Their greatest contribution to the edification of the kingdom, and the activity
in which they showed the nobility and generosity of their spirits, was in the building
of temples and monasteries, witnesses for posterity of the kingdom’s opulence and the
great number of Indians that lived then, because even after the cocoliztli (plague)
there were enough hands for such grand buildings, so strong, so big, so beautiful, and
with such perfect architecture that we could not ask for more [ . . . ] and what those
who contemplate this greatness highly praise is the spirit of those ancient fathers who
took on so much, and the good fortune and great perfection with which they com-
pleted them: because back then there were no Democritus who knew architecture, or
Alaxandras who knew how to build Delphic temples, or Hermogenes who made Doric
houses, or anyone who knew how to carve a stone or use a plumb line. And despite all,
they undertook temples that can compete with Diana’s temples at Ephesus.” See
Reyes-Valerio, Arte indocristiano, pp. 223–25.
15. New Spain’s monasteries were traditionally built a day’s march on foot from each
other because they frequently offered room and board to penitents and other monks.
Elena Isabel Estrada de Gerlero points out the relative significance of the monastery at
Actopan, which was a priory since its foundation in 1548, although its construction
began two years later, in 1550. See “Los temas escatológicos en la pintura mural novo-
hispana del siglo XVI,” p. 71.
16. In his monograph entitled Actopan, Luis MacGregor quotes Federico Gómez
de Orozco, who knew of a letter mentioning precisely this kind of artistic team that
traveled from one monastery to another in order to adorn thousands of square meters
with didactic images: “Don Federico says that Dr. Don Nicolás León showed him a
handwritten note copied from a fragment of a letter addressed by Don Vasco de
Quiroga to Friar Alonso de la Veracruz, in which he gave thanks to the Indian painters
who painted in the Roman-style (grottesco) that had been sent from Mexico. Doctor
León supposed that the letter must have been written around the middle of the six-
teenth century” (35).
17. Estrada de Gerlero provides a careful analysis of the iconographic and literary
sources of the demoniacal representations at Actopan, particularly those found in the
scenes devoted to the deadly sins: “The variety of demons represented in the scenes
portraying the ‘Punishments of the Deadly Sins’ may only be compared with the tor-
tures suffered by the lost souls. This demonic polymorphism has medieval roots, born
from German, Flemish, and Dutch patterns, from the second half of the fifteenth
century, of the kind represented in the engravings of Ars Moriendi (ca. 1465), Viso
Lamentabilis (Lovaina, 1487), woodcarvings of the Last Judgment and even engrav-
ings from much later periods, such as La escala de San Buenaventura (Saint Bue-
naventura’s Ladder) by Lucas Cranach, the Elder (Coburg 1513). It’s interesting to
note that the Doctrina Cristiana en Lengua Huasteca (Christian Doctrine in the
Huasteca Language) by the Augustinian friar Juan de la Cruz (Imprenta de Pedro
Ocharte, México, 1571), written for the Huexutla region, used a series of one-hundred
and fifty engravings. The one included in García Icazbalceta’s study shows a demon
that resembles those in Actopan, as well as the above-mentioned earlier European
examples. These demoniacal figures were also used by the tlacuilos who collaborated
with Fray Bernardino de Sahagún in the Florentine Codex; they likewise appear in
other sixteenth- century mural paintings, such as the ‘Anathema’ scene in the Francis-
can monastery at Atlihuetzia, and the sacramental subject at San Francisco Mazapa”
(“Los temas” 80).
Appendix
1. The seventh sacrament is that of matrimony.

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Index
Note: Page references for illustrations and their captions are indicated with italics
(example: Saint Augustine of Hippo, 8); references to information appearing in the notes
give the page number followed by n and the note number (example: baptism of Indians,
185n17).
A 153, 154–156; whitewashing of,

acanthus leaves and vines: as motif in 145–146
mural paintings, 82, 105, 114, 117, Apocalypse, 146–148, 151–156. See also
118; examples of, 83, 106, 107, 115, Last Judgment
118 Apologética historia sumaria (Bartolomé
Acolman monastery mural paintings, 8, de las Casas), 73, 122
12, 53 architecture, of monasteries: distinctive
Actopan monastery, 16, 18, 84, 145. See New Spanish features, 16, 73–76,
also Actopan monastery mural 156–157; friars as architects, 83–84
paintings (see also de Mata, Andrés); indigenous
Actopan monastery mural paintings, 8, participation in, 11, 19–20, 71–73,
54, 143, 145–157, 146, 149, 153; 87–88, 204n14; influence of illustrated
apocalyptic themes of, 146–148, texts on, 4–11, 150, 193n18 (see also
153–154 (see also Last Judgment); “bookish architecture”; Porziuncola (of
arrangement of, 152–154, 153; Saint Huejotzingo monastery)); as
Augustine depicted in, 8, 84; performance spaces, 15–17, 33–34, 55,
compared to those at Itzmiquilpan, 84, 179n15, 180n16, 187n27
101–102 (see also Itzmiquilpan Arróniz, Othón, 17, 55
monastery mural paintings); demons arrows. See bows and arrows
depicted in, 143, 204n17; female figure artists and artisans, Indian: as
depicted in, 21–23, 136–137, 148, 149, competition for European artists and
155–156 (see also Cihuacoatl; Lucía craftsmen, 60–61; contributions to
(dramatic character)); historical monastery construction of, 11, 71–73,
context of, 138, 147–148; influence 197n1, 204n14; depiction of, 77;
of illustrated books on, 6–8, 84, education and training of, 19–20,
149–151, 154–155, 204n17; Last 76–78, 85, 94, 181n26, 197n34, 197n37;
Judgment depicted in, 11, 54, 54, 130, mural painting by, 19–20, 78–83, 86,
204n17; parallels with El auto juicio 98–101, 191n8, 200n23, 204n16;
final, 6–8, 21–23, 136–137, 143, 149, regulation of, 62, 145–146, 181n24,
217
218 · Index
artists and artisans (cont.) C

191n7; sculpture by, 179n13, 191n8; Cacaxtla mural paintings, 82
skills of, 20, 59–62, 72–73, 190n3, cactli (Indian sandals), 83, 111
198n6, 204n14. See also tlacuilos La caída de Adán y Eva, 39–40, 122–123
arts and literature, Indian participation calmecacs (colleges), 19, 77–78, 85,
in, 58–63, 71–73, 184n7 181n26, 197n34. See also education,
atriums, 15–16, 180n16, 180n17 pre-Hispanic
Saint Augustine of Hippo, 8, 9, 10, 127 Calpan monastery, decorative elements
Augustinians, 45, 99–100, 125, 126–127, of, 6, 151
194n19; coat of arms of, 96, 105–106, canvases, pictorial: antecedents of, 65,
108 189n37, 193n17; descriptions and
El auto del juicio final. See El juicio final representations of, 63, 64–65, 66, 67;
(The Last Judgment) (Andrés de Olmos) use in religious education and
indoctrination, 63, 64–65, 88, 157,
B 189n37, 193n17
baptism of Indians, 33, 185n17, 195n25 Cartas de relación. See Letters from
La batalla de los salvajes, 15, 55–57 Mexico (Hernán Cortés)
de Benavente, Toribio (Motolinia), caxilteca, 18–19, 181n22. See also
39–40, 59, 72–73, 75–76, 122–123 semantic assimilation
Biblica Italica (Niccoló Malermi), 112 centaurs, 83, 105–109, 106, 111–112
“bookish architecture,” 4–11, 150, chapels, balcony, 55
193n18. See also architecture; books, chapels, open or “Indian”: design of,
illustrated 74–75, 157, 180n18, 195n27, 195n28;
books, illustrated: as evangelical tools, mural paintings of, 18, 34, 54, 75–76
15, 87; influence on architecture, 4–11, (see also mural painting; specific
150, 193n18; influence on monastic monasteries); pre-Hispanic antecedents
mural paintings, 78–81, 149–152, of, 74 (see also teocallis (temples));
202n3; influence on mural paintings at terminology of, 189n39, 194n23
Acolman, 12, 13, 149; influence on chapels, processional, 6, 55, 75, 194n23,
mural paintings at Actopan, 54, 196n24
151–156, 204n17; influence on mural chapels, typology of, 193n14
paintings at Itzmiquilpan, 96–98, Chichimecs, 13, 25–26, 84, 95–96,
151–152; influence on mural paintings 110–111; depictions of, 115, 117, 119,
at Zinacantepec, 22, 23; influence on 123
New Spanish art and literature, 21, Chichimec War, 12, 110, 113–114,
28–29, 192n10; reproduction of, 198n12; and Itzmiquilpan mural
68–69, 190n3. See also “bookish paintings, 11, 14–15, 84, 119–121. See
architecture”; codices; individual works also Guerra de los chichimecas
bows and arrows: in civic performances, (Gonzalo de las Casas)
121; in Itzmiquilpan murals, 56, 114, chickens, 19, 181n22
115; as reference to Augustinian coat chimalli (shield), 83, 115, 115–116, 119
of arms, 105–106, 108; as reference to Chimalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin,
Chichimecs, 119, 123; in religious Domingo Francisco de San Antón
plays, 56, 123 Muñón, 53–54, 131
Brief Account of the Destruction of the Cholula, 38–39, 41–42
Indies (Bartolomé de las Casas), 7–8, Cholula monastery mural paintings,
8, 9 193n13
Index · 219
Chronicle of the Glorious Saint de Toro, Martín: Relación de Martín de

Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Toro, 116, 117
Church (Alonso de Orozco), 7–8, 10 devil, 130. See also demons
chronicles, 30–31 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 20, 31, 121,
Cihuacoatl, 21–23, 24, 135–136, 144, 183n2
155–156, 157. See also Tonantzin disease, 138, 147–148
Civitas Dei (Saint Augustine of Hippo), Dominicans, 45, 49, 52, 88, 137. See also
127 de las Casas, Bartolomé
Códice de Tlatelolco. See Tlatelolco double mistaken identity, 18, 32–33, 121,
Codex 184n8, 189n38. See also Lockhart,
Códice Florentino. See Historia general James
de las cosas de la Nueva España dragons, 116–119
(Florentine Codex) (Bernardino de dramatic works, 15, 70–71, 87, 147, 157.
Sahagún) See also exempla; performance;
codices, indigenous: as influence on religious plays
monastic mural paintings, 34, 193n13 Durán, Diego: Historia de las Indias de
(see also mural painting); and Nueva España y Tierra Firme, 38–39,
Itzmiquilpan mural paintings, 56–57, 40, 186n22, 186n23
101, 102, 112–113, 157–158, 182n31 Dürer, Albrecht, engravings of, 80–81
codices, Testerian, 63, 88, 157
Colegio de Indios. See San José de los E
Naturales education: monasteries as site for, 67,
colors and pigments, symbolism of, 85, 197n37; monastic trade schools, 5, 20,
103. See also in tiilli tlapalli (the black 60, 76–77, 181n26, 188n34 (see also
and the red) San José de los Naturales); pre-
Confessionario breve en lengua mexicana Hispanic, 19, 77–78, 85, 181n26,
y castellana (Alonso de Molina), 12, 191n6, 197n34; use of mural paintings
13, 53, 69, 149 in, 88, 152 (see also mural painting);
Confessionario mayor en lengua use of performance in, 15, 70–71, 87,
mexicana y castellana (Alonso de 157; use of pictorial canvases in,
Molina), 8, 178n9 64–65, 157, 189n37, 193n17; use of
copilli (crest), 116 Testerian codices in, 63, 157
Cortés, Hernán, 4, 37, 44–45 El Mezquital valley, 96, 199n13. See also
Council of Trent, 71, 98–99, 145–146 Actopan monastery; Itzmiquilpan,
courtyards: of monasteries, 15–16, 17, 33, Hidalgo; Itzmiquilpan monastery
49, 67, 74–75, 180n17; of temples, 16, del Encina, Juan, 48
39, 41–42, 49, 74, 182n30, 195n24 (see engravings. See books, illustrated
also teocallis (temples)) epidemics, 138, 147–148
craftsmen. See artists and artisans Erasmus, 125, 202n5
Estrada de Gerlero, Elena Isabel: on
D murals at Actopan, 138, 145–146,
dance, 43, 45, 68, 110–111 147–148, 152–156; on murals at
Debroise, Oliver, 104, 112–113 Itzmiquilpan, 84, 98, 101, 109, 119;
demons, 128–129, 143, 143, 154–155, on themes in monastery murals,
204n17. See also devil 150–152
de Testera, Jacobo, 63. See also Testerian Eve, 122, 136, 153. See also La caída de
codices Adán y Eva
220 · Index
exempla, 70–71, 87, 157. See also (Bernardino de Sahagún), 30, 77,
missionary theater; religious plays 204n17; on El juicio final, 131; on
indigenous religious beliefs, 136,
F 140–141, 144; on the skills of Indian
de Fiore, Joaquín, 11, 125 artisans, 61–62, 72, 77; on the use and
Florentine Codex. See Historia general de meaning of jade, 141; on the use of the
las cosas de la Nueva España temazcal, 142
(Florentine Codex) (Bernardino de Historia natural y moral de las Indias
Sahagún) (José de Acosta): on performances in
Flos Sanctorum (1521), 7 Cholula, 41–42
Franciscans: and Augustinians, 127; History of the Indians of New Spain. See
inventiveness of, 64–65, 125; Historia de los indios de la Nueva
millennialism of, 124–126, 203n7; España (Toribio de Benavente
philosophical influences on, 125–126, (Motolinia))
188n34, 202n5; Twelve Apostolic History of the Indies of New Spain and
Franciscans, 45, 187n29 Terra Firme. See Historia de las Indias
friars. See specific orders and individuals de Nueva España y Tierra Firme
(Diego Durán)
G Horcasitas, Fernando: on El juicio final,
de Gante, Pedro (Pierre de Gan), 5, 60, 130–135, 138–139; on missionary
66, 68 theater, 46, 55–56; on New Spain’s
Garcidueñas, José Rojas, 33, 48–50 apocalyptic vision, 124
General History of the Things of New horses, 107
Spain. See Historia general de las cosas Huejotzingo monastery, Porziuncola of,
de la Nueva España (Florentine 10–11, 14, 150, 178n10, 179n11,
Codex) (Bernardino de Sahagún) 179n12, 193n18
Gersón, Juan, 80, 81, 82, 202n3 Huitzilopochtli, 140–141
grottesco style, 22, 61, 96–97, 104, humanism, 125–127
201n25, 201n28 hybridity, 3–29
Guerra de los chichimecas (Gonzalo de
las Casas), 12–14, 95–96, 109–111, I
113–114 Icone historiarum veteris testamenti
(Hans Holbein), 80, 81
H iconographic analysis. See iconological
heads, decapitated, 107–108 analysis
Hell, 144 iconographic programs. See mural
Historia de las Indias de Nueva España y painting
Tierra Firme (Diego Durán): on iconography, pre-Hispanic, 21–29,
religious performances, 38–39, 79–83, 84–85, 90–91, 94–95. See also
186n22, 186n23 individual elements
Historia de los indios de la Nueva España iconological analysis, 90–96, 177n3,
(Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia)), 198n5, 203n12
30, 75–76 iconological synthesis. See iconological
Historia eclesiástica indiana (Gerónimo analysis
de Mendieta), 60, 63, 127 Indians: as artists and artisans (see artists
Historia general de las cosas de la and artisans, Indian; tlacuilos);
Nueva España (Florentine Codex) religious and spiritual beliefs of,
Index · 221
184n9, 184n10 (see also specific deities character of Lucía in (see Lucía
and concepts); spiritual status of, 126, (dramatic character)); dating of,
130, 194n22, 196n25; terms used for, 131–132, 133–134, 138, 189n36,
184n8. See also specific groups 203n11; discussion and analysis of,
“indigenous other,” 18 128–145, 157; indigenous reaction to,
in tiilli tlapalli (the black and the red), 51, 53–55, 131; and mural paintings of
85, 101 Actopan, 54, 153, 154–156; origins,
Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo, 96, 199n13 antecedents, and influences, 51–52,
Itzmiquilpan monastery, 25, 84, 96–105, 55, 138–144; performance and staging
97, 113 of, 51, 131–133, 137, 143
Itzmiquilpan monastery mural paintings:
codices as inspiration for, 101, 102, L
112–113, 116, 117, 157–158 (see also de las Casas, Bartolomé: Brief Account of
codices); compared to those at the Destruction of the Indies, 7–8, 8, 9;
Actopan, 84, 101–102 (see also Actopan on La batalla de los salvajes, 15, 55; on
monastery mural paintings); elements the skills of Indian artisans, 20, 73, 122
and motifs - acanthus, 82, 83, 104, 105, de las Casas, Gonzalo: Guerra de los
114, 115, 117–118, 118; elements and chichimecas, 13–14, 95–96, 109–111,
motifs - bows and arrows, 56, 105–106, 113–114
114, 115; elements and motifs - Last Judgment, 6, 7, 51–52, 54–55, 126,
centaur, 83, 105–109, 106, 111–112; 132, 150–151, 188n35. See also
elements and motifs - dragon, 116–119, Apocalypse; El juicio final (The Last
118; elements and motifs - grottesco Judgment) (Andrés de Olmos);
elements, 104, 201n25; elements and millennialism
motifs - Spaniards, 120; elements and Léon-Portilla, Miguel, 37–38
motifs - speech scrolls, 83, 105, 111, Letters from Mexico (Hernán Cortés), 4,
114, 117–118; elements and motifs - 30, 37
warriors, 56, 83, 83, 114–116, 115, literature, Indo-Christian, 3–4, 30–34,
182n31, 201n25; hybrid cultural 177n4, 183n4
content of, 11–15, 23–26, 28, 82–85, Lockhart, James, 58–59, 184n8; double
98–101, 200n23; hybrid cultural content mistaken identity of, 18, 32, 121,
of, examples of, 83, 115; interpretations 184n8, 189n38; new philology of, 107,
of, 119–120; in intimate versus public 193n17
areas, 85, 86, 101–102, 200n21; Lucía (dramatic character), 21–23,
parallels with the play La batalla de 134–136, 141–144, 148, 149, 155–156
los salvajes, 55–57; socio-political
context of, 11–15, 84, 95–96, 119–123, M
200n19 (see also Chichimec War); macahuitl (club), 116, 118, 119, 121, 123;
technique and form of, 25, 101–104; examples of, 83, 115, 118
whitewashing of, 102–103 macana (club). See macahuitl (club)
Malermi, Niccoló: Biblica Italica, 112
J de Mata, Andrés, 83–84, 96–97, 99
jade, 140, 141 Matamoros. See Santiago Matamoros
Joachinism. See de Fiore, Joaquín; McAndrew, John, 64, 70–71, 78–80,
millennialism 83–84, 127
El juicio final (The Last Judgment) de Mendieta, Gerónimo, 60, 132–133
(Andrés de Olmos), 11, 135, 159–175; mestizaje. See hybridity
222 · Index
Saint Michael (archangel), 118, 118–119 regarding, 98–99, 103, 145–146,

Mictlan, 144, 147, 148 181n24, 191n7; relationship to
military gear: appearing in murals, missionary theater and religious plays,
24–25, 115–116, 118–119, 182n31, 16–18, 21–23, 24, 34, 54–57, 63–70 (see
201n25; appearing in performances, also missionary theater; religious
121; examples of, 83, 102, 115, 118; plays); role of tlacuilos in the creation
iconography of, 119, 121, 123. See also of, 78–83, 86, 191n8 (see also
bows and arrows tlacuilos); syncretic nature of, 32–34,
millennialism, 124–127, 148 53–54, 85–89, 91–94, 100–101, 104;
missionary theater: European techniques and materials used in, 85,
antecedents of, 38, 41, 42, 47–50; first 103, 196n33, 198n1; whitewashing of,
performance of, 50, 51; indigenous 102–103, 145–146, 151. See also
participation in, 180n20, 184n7; specific sites; specific subjects
indigenous perception of, 51, 53–54;
and mural painting, 16–18, 21–23, 24, N
52–57, 63–71; staging of, 137; syncretic Nahuatl, 33, 99–100, 129, 192n11
nature and origins of, 17–18, 31–34, Natural and Moral History of the Indies.
44–56, 89, 131–132, 156–157, 192n11; See Historia natural y moral de las
theatricality of, 36; as tool of “spiritual Indias (José de Acosta)
conquest,” 44–47, 58, 86–88, 192n11. Nexcuitilmachiotl montenehua Juicio
See also dramatic works; performance; Final (Exemplum Called the Last
religious plays Judgment). See El juicio final (The
de Molina, Alonso: Confessionario breve Last Judgment) (Andrés de Olmos)
en lengua mexicana y castellana, 12,
13, 53, 69, 149; Confessionario mayor O
en lengua mexicana y castellana, 8 de Olmos, Andrés, 81, 125, 128–130, 135;
momoztlis (ceremonial platforms), 37, 49 El juicio final (The Last Judgment)
monasteries: architecture of (see (see El juicio final (The Last Judgment)
architecture, of monasteries); “fortress” (Andrés de Olmos)
monasteries (see Acolman monastery; Otomí, 99–100, 104
Actopan monastery); functions of,
44–45, 67, 148, 204n15; mural P
paintings in (see mural painting); Panofsky, Erwin, 91, 92, 177n3, 198n5
public versus private spaces in, 85, 86, pantli (banner), 83, 115, 115
101–102, 200n21, 200n22 Paz, Octavio, 32, 126
monastic orders. See Augustinians; performance, 3, 34–35; European
Dominicans; Franciscans performances, 41, 42, 47–49, 186n23,
More, Thomas: Utopia, 125–126 186n24, 193n16; recreation of historic
Motolinia. See de Benavente, Toribio events, 121–123, 201n32; religious,
mural painting, 3–29, 76–89, 196n32; 122–123, 185n18, 194n20. See also
analysis of, 90–96; as didactic tool, 88, dance; dramatic works; exempla;
152; influence of illustrated texts on missionary theater; religious plays
(see books, illustrated); pre-Hispanic performance, pre-Hispanic, 34–43, 45,
examples, 43, 82; pre-Hispanic 180n19, 182n30, 186n21, 186n23,
iconographic influences on, 21–29, 186n24. See also dance
79–83, 84–85, 90–91, 100–101, performance spaces, 15–17, 33–34, 49,
193n13, 196n31; prohibitions 55, 179n15, 180n16, 180n17
Index · 223
philology, new, 107, 193n17. See also San Miguel Arcángel. See Itzmiquilpan
Lockhart, James monastery
pictorial canvases. See canvases, pictorial San Miguel Huejotzingo, Puebla. See
Pierce, Donna, 119 Huejotzingo monastery
pigments. See colors and pigments San Nicolás Actopan. See Actopan
plays. See dramatic works; religious plays monastery
Porziuncola (of Huejotzingo monastery), Santiago Matamoros, 108–109
10–11, 14, 150, 178n10, 179n11, School of Mechanical Arts. See San José
179n12, 194n18 de los Naturales
posa. See chapels, processional Sebastián, Santiago, 150
pre-iconographic description. See semantic assimilation, 18–19, 107
iconological analysis serpents, 21–22, 136–137, 143–144,
printing press, 68–69 155–156
psychomachia (battle between good and Siete sermones principales sobre los siete
evil), 114–116, 197n36 pecados mortales (Seven Principal
public entertainment. See performance Sermons about the Seven Deadly Sins;
Andrés de Olmos), 129
Q sin, 126, 130
Quetzalcoatl, 33, 38–39, 41–42, 85, 141 snakes. See serpents
de Quiroga, Vasco, 125–126 Solomon, Temple of. See Temple of
Solomon
R speech scrolls, 83, 105, 111, 114, 117–118
Relación de Martín de Toro (Martín de “spiritual conquest,” 4, 44–46, 58–63,
Toro), 116, 117 71–73, 99–101, 187n31
religious plays: Indian participation in, sweeping, 140–141
180n20; and mural paintings, 21–23, syncretism, 20–21, 27–29, 31–34, 184n8.
24, 34, 54–57 (see also El juicio final See also tequitqui (syncretic art)
(The Last Judgment) (Andrés de syntagmatic analysis, 95
Olmos)); origins of and influences on,
16–18, 39–40, 45–49, 71, 183n5, T
190n41. See also missionary theater; Tecamachalco monastery mural
individual works paintings, 80–81, 81, 82, 202n3
Reyes, Alfonso, 45 temazcal (bath or cauldron), 141–142,
Reyes-Valerio, Constantino, 19, 71, 78, 148, 149, 155–156
80, 99, 145 Temazcalteci (goddess in the baths), 142
Rhetorica Christiana (Diego Valadés), tempera, 103
20–21, 64–65, 66, 67, 154–155, 191n5 Temple of Solomon, 11, 14, 150, 179n11,
Ricard, Robert, 39–40 180n18
Rojas Garcidueñas, José, 42–43 teocallis (temples), 16, 39, 41–42, 74,
182n30, 195n24
S tequitqui (syncretic art), 28, 61, 182n33,
de Sahagún, Bernardino, 20, 104. See 192n9. See also syncretism
also Historia general de las cosas de la Testerian codices, 63, 88, 157
Nueva España (Florentine Codex) texts, illustrated. See books, illustrated;
(Bernardino de Sahagún) codices; Testerian codices
San José de los Naturales, 5, 20, 60, theater (individual works). See dramatic
74–75, 76–77, 181n26, 188n34 works; individual plays
224 · Index
theater (performances). See performance U

theaters (performance spaces), 37, 39, Utopia (Thomas More), 52–53, 125–126,
41–42 202n5, 203n6
Saint Thomas, 33
Tiripitío. See San José de los Naturales V
tlacuilo (term), 177n5 Valadés, Diego, 73, 182n29, 191n5;
tlacuilos, 19, 61–62, 77; education and Rhetorica Christiana, 20–21, 64–65,
training of, 19, 77–78, 85, 186n19; and 66, 67, 154–155, 191n5
European texts, 4–5, 28, 98; influences
on the work of, 4–5, 28, 98, 147–148, W
200n20; mural painting by, 19–20, warriors: in El juicio final, 140; in Martín
78–83, 147–148, 204n16; restrictions de Toro’s account, 116–117, 117; in
on work of, 62, 191n7 murals at Itzmiquilpan monastery, 56,
tlacuilotzin (art of fine painting), 77, 83, 83, 114–116, 115, 182n31, 201n25;
77–78, 85 in performances, 201n32; in the
Tlatelolco Codex, 102 Tlatelolco Codex, 102
Tlaxcala monastery, 75–76, 195n28 witchcraft, 128–129, 135
Tonantzin, 33, 136. See also Cihuacoatl Wright, David Charles, 25
Tratado de hehicerías y sortilegios
(Treatise on Witchcraft and Sorcery; Z
Andrés de Olmos), 128–129, 157 Zinacantepec monastery mural
True History of the Conquest of New Spain paintings, 23
(Bernal Díaz del Castillo), 20, 31, 121 de Zumárraga, Juan, 68–69, 202n5
About the Author
Michael K. Schuessler is professor of humanities at the Universidad Autónoma Met-

ropolitana, Cuajimalpa, in Mexico City, where he teaches courses dedicated to Latin
American art and literature, pre- Columbian Mexico, and colonial Mexico. He re-
ceived his PhD in Hispanic languages and literatures from the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles, where he specialized in the literature and arts of colonial Latin
America, particularly New Spain (Mexico). He has written many articles devoted
to the interpretation of Latin American literature and culture and is the author of
several books, including La undécima musa: Guadalupe Amor and Elena Ponia-
towska: An Intimate Portrait. In 2006, University of Texas Press published his edition
of Alma Reed’s lost autobiography, entitled Peregrina: Love and Death in Mexico. In
December 2010 he published a collaborative volume on gay culture in Mexico—the
first of its kind—entitled México se escribe con jota: Una historia de la cultura gay. He
recently, with Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan, published a scholarly edition of the cor-
respondence between Alma Reed and Felipe Carrillo Puerto, entitled “Tuyo hasta
que me muera”: Epistolario de Alma Reed (Pixan Halal) y Felipe Carrillo Puerto (H´pil
Zultuché): Marzo a diciembre de 1923, with Mexico’s CONACULTA. He is currently
at work on a book of “documentary fiction” concerning the lives and activities of a
group of foreigners in post-revolutionary Mexico.

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Foundational Arts

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Manufactured in the United States of America on acid-free, archival- quality paper

Introduction. Texts and Contexts: “Bookish Architecture,”

1. Toward a Literature of Foundations 30

2. Renascent Genres in New Spain 58

3. Iconography and Evangelization 90

4. The Last Judgment: Mural Painting and Missionary Theater 124

Appendix. The Last Judgment 159

1a. Franciscan monastery of San Andrés Calpan, Puebla.

8. General view of the mural painting cycle located in the

23. Detail of Niccoló Malermi’s Biblia Italica, Venice, 1490. 112

Texts and Contexts

I made a vaulted church in the monastery of Santiago Tlatelolco . . . and

A detailed look at the development of a unique early Indo- Christian liter-

such as the notion of “colonial semiosis” originally proposed by Walter

it should be acknowledged that the friars, in their zeal to indoctrinate their

clearly perceived in the façade of one of the four processional chapels

Figure 1b. Reproduction of an engraving of the same apoca-

Figure 2a. San Nicolás Actopan, Hidalgo. Detail of a mural

and the vault of the Augustinian monastery at Acolman, state of Mexico

Figure 2c. Detail of an engraving found in the Crónica de San

inspiration of some of the monastic structures built to Christianize

Figure 3a. Monastery of San Agustín de Acolman, state of Mexico.

political reality: the Chichimec War, an armed conflict sparked by the

Figure 3b. Frontispiece of Alonso de Molina’s Confesionario

Figure 4. Monastery of San Miguel Huejotzingo, Puebla. The Porziuncola

message of the mural program at Itzmiquilpan, whose interpretation has

Nevertheless, Actopan’s atrium, which measures approximately 289 by 182

According to Othón Arróniz, mural painting is defined, like missionary

Figure 5. In the monastery of San Nicolás Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo. General

postconquest iconography, artistic programs that already evidenced syn-

innovation through its appropriation and consequent modification of an

Figure 6a. Example of the marginalia with their respective

Figure 7. The Nahua goddess Cihuacoatl, a

(shield), pantli (banner), and macahuitl (club), as well as the reproduction

This hypothesis turns out to be most convincing when it is recalled that

Figure 8. Monastery of San Miguel, Itzmiquilpan, Hidalgo. General view

artistic framework that supports themes common to European ecclesiastic

beginning with those likely imported by the three Flemish Franciscans

desperately attempting to exorcise. In closing, I would also like to propose

Indo- Christian Literature: Renascent Genres

This affirmation is clearly and repeatedly demonstrated in such funda-

perhaps what would appear to be a more plausible origin—in the symbolic

the word “syncretism,” generally employed to designate this phenome-

As historian James Lockhart has emphasized, New Spain’s cultural rich-

enabled religious beliefs, linguistic expressions, and cultural attitudes to

in the monasteries’ huge courtyards, which could hold enormous crowds.

Undoubtedly, most of the decoration included in the aforementioned

Ethno-Dramatic Performances in Pre-Hispanic

Since the mid-nineteenth century, historians, philologists, and scholars of

This description by Father Acosta reminds us of the Greeks’ first repre-

Mexican and foreign scholars of American literature” (Reseña histórica de

Consistent with this position, New Spanish missionary theater, which

Despite this unqualified rejection, expert nahuatlato Miguel León-

[ . . . ] and [the blunderbuss] was taken to the market square, where it

Besides this clear description of a theater-like architectural construction,