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ABSTRACT
Fernán González de Eslava’s fifth Coloquio espiritual y sacramental is a Christian allegorical drama from New Spain of the 1570s. It concerns Spanish attempts to ‘pacify’ the Gran Chichimeca, a contested desert frontier to the north of the Valley of Mexico. The antagonist of this play is a Chichimeca warrior, who challenges military and missionary attempts to conquer and convert. González de Eslava’s allegory vilifies this nomadic native warrior, casting him as the very figure of sin. This piece portrays a fierce Indigenous alterity in order to justify Spanish incursions into native lands and promote a Christianizing agenda. Remarkably, the playwright portrays Chichimeca territory with reference to a major foundational narrative of central Mexican peoples. He invokes the storied trajectory of ancestral migrants who departed from legendary sites of origin in the north, and journeyed southward into the Mexican Basin, where they settled. However, the allegorical drama reconfigures this southward path, and in the place of a central Mexican foundational narrative, González de Eslava asserts a Christian narrative and symbolic system.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Dana Leibsohn for their excellent suggestions that helped me to improve this article. I am also grateful to Bruce Dean Willis, David Castillo, Hal Langfur, and Maureen Jameson for their helpful questions and insights on this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Arróniz proposes a likely date range of 1570–1571 (Citation1998, 70); Mariscal Hay proposes 1572–1574 (Citation2004, 2:1248); Greer supports Arróniz’s probable dating but also suggests that the piece may have been posterior to 1574 (Citation2008, 89); Lorente Medina proposes that it dates to 1573 or 1574 (Citation2020, 243).
2 I use this term in its broad sense, to refer to Nahua central Mexico.
3 See Rama Citation1985, 38; Arróniz Báez Citation1998, 9; Frenk Citation2000, 486; Post Citation2018, 338.
4 See García Icazbalceta Citation1877, xxxii; Arróniz Báez Citation1998, 10–11; Frenk Citation1989; Citation2000, 486–89; Lorente Medina Citation2020, 51.
5 See O’Gorman Citation1940, 595; Rama Citation1985, 40; Arróniz Báez Citation1998, 10–12, 25–29; Frenk Citation2000, 486; Post Citation2018; Lorente Medina Citation2020, 42–68.
6 In a letter following a brief incarceration in 1574, González de Eslava refers to his dress as a clerical habit, and his status as a ‘clérigo de evangelio’ (a clergyman or deacon, below the rank of priest) (Rojas Garcidueñas Citation1935, 84; Lorente Medina Citation2000, 69).
7 See Rama Citation1985, 39; Maldonado Citation1991, 175, 179–80; Frenk Citation2000, 485; Lorente Medina Citation2020, 66, 69.
8 See García Icazbalceta Citation1877, xxxiii; Rama Citation1985, 39; Arróniz Báez Citation1998, 12; Frenk Citation2000, 488; Cebollero Citation2014; Post Citation2018, 339.
9 The office of boticario was an established profession in Spain and, therefore, socially identifies this performer with the colonial community, whether he was mestizo, Spanish, or Creole.
10 ‘Solo hablaban náhuatl o estaban en una fase muy incipiente de ser bilingües.’
11 ‘Se pensaba para un público mixto, conformado en parte por la población indígena.’
12 See Hanke Citation1943, 235; Powell Citation1952, 99–102, 105–6; Naylor and Polzer Citation1986, 34–36, 46; Carrillo Cázares Citation2000, 1:55–56, 60; Santamaría Citation2003, 31–46; Poole Citation2011, 211.
13 Such arguments were raised by Francisco de Morales, Dr. Juan Bautista de Orozco, and Gonzalo de las Casas (Powell Citation1952, 107–9; Naylor and Polzer Citation1986, 46; Carrillo Cázares Citation2000, 1:288, 2:615–36; Santamaría Citation2003, 35–36, 55–56; Poole Citation2011, 212.
14 See Zorita Citation2011, 111; Powell Citation1952, 108; Gradie Citation1994, 69; Carrillo Cázares Citation2000, 1:272.
15 Carrillo Cázares attributes this text to the Augustinian Guillermo de Santamaría (Citation2000). However, scholars have traditionally attributed it to Gonzalo de las Casas. In fact, Alonso de Zorita describes this text, attributes authorship to Gonzalo de las Casas, and notes that Las Casas lent it to him to review when he visited Zorita in Granada, during the period that Zorita was writing his Relación de la Nueva España (Zorita Citation2011, 111).
16 Here, the curved mountain top above the seven caves also identifies this site as Colhuacan or Teocolhuacan.
17 See Robertson Citation1959; Barlow and Graulich Citation1995; Brotherston Citation1995, 45–97; Boone Citation2000, 197–221; Castañeda de la Paz Citation2007; Carrasco and Sessions Citation2007; Leibsohn and Pillsbury Citation2009; Rajagopalan Citation2018.
18 Olko comments that, as paired with a reference to the year 2 Calli (2 house), the headdress in this sculpture identifies Moteuczoma with 2 Calli, 1325, when Chichimeca-Mexica migrants founded Tenochtitlan (Citation2012, 64).
19 Zorita also attributes to Motolinía a reference to Teocolhuacan as a Mexica site of origins (Citation2011, 143). Similarly drawing from Motolinía, Las Casas in his Apologética historia links Teocolhuacan to the seven ‘barrancas’ of Chicomoztoc (Citation1909, 614–15).
20 Olmos produced the Suma as a reconstruction of his prior Tratado de las antigüedades mexicanas, of which he did not retain a copy, having sent the original to Spain upon its completion in 1540. Scholars have also linked Olmos to an additional manuscript, La historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, which was brought to Madrid in 1547 (Baudot Citation1995, 166–67, 173–74, 194).
21 By Eslava’s day, Bartolomé de las Casas had also written his yet unpublished Apologética historia, which includes a summary version of Motolinía’s account of the origins of the peoples of Anahuac (Citation1909, 614–15). During the years that Eslava wrote his Coloquio quinto, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and his Nahua collaborators had not yet produced their Spanish-language translation of the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, or Florentine Codex, although this text also gives an account of departures from Chicomoztoc (Terraciano Citation2019, 3, 6–9; Sahagún Citation1950–Citation1982, 13:49, 10:195–97). Neither had Fray Diego Durán completed his Historia de las Indias de Nueva España y islas de Tierra Firme of 1581, which similarly recounts Chichimeca migrations from Chicomoztoc (Heyden Citation1994, xxviii, 9–19).
22 According to Gerónimo de Mendieta, who cites the Suma in his Historia eclesiastica indiana, Olmos’s account of ‘la venida de los indios que poblaron esta tierra’ (the arrival of the Indians who populated this land) agrees with that of Motolinía (Mendieta Citation1997, 273; Baudot Citation1995, 169–79).
23 Zorita cites a similar reference by Olmos to the origins of the first peoples of Anahuac in the north, ‘hacia la tierra de Gelisco’ (toward the lands of Jalisco) (Zorita Citation2011, 145). Mendieta, who consulted both Motolinía and Olmos, also produces a parallel reference to ancestors from far-off lands, ‘hacia la parte de Xalisco’ (toward the region of Jalisco) (Citation1997, 267).
24 Motolinía similarly wrote: ‘Entraron también por el puerto llamado Tula, que es a la parte del norte a respecto de México’ (They also came [into this region] through the entry city called Tula, which is located to the north, with respect to Mexico) (2001, 59).
25 ‘Diversas características de los así llamados “chichimecos” y sus tácticas de guerra para representar el peligro de las fragilidades humanas y la ferocidad del enemigo demoníaco.’
26 Sahagún did not write the prologues to the twelve books of his Historial general until 1576 to 1577, after González de Eslava had written his Quinto coloquio (Terraciano Citation2019, 7).
27 These are the subject prefix ‘ti’ (we) and the object prefix ‘c’ (it) in the phrase, ‘tictemoa’ (we seek [it]); and the possessive prefix ‘to’ (our) in ‘tochan’ (our home).
28 This coloquio celebrates the first return to New Spain of a general who later died in Manila in 1572. This return would have occurred before the playwright produced his Coloquio quinto, during the first half of the 1570s.
29 The Dominican friar Diego Durán, in his Historia of 1581, similarly sustains that these ancients were from among the lost tribes of Israel (Heyden Citation1994, xxvi).
30 As Poole asserts, the effects of the counter-reformation were felt in New Spain by the beginning of the 1570s (Citation2018, 3–4). The Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Mexico City in 1571, there were new restrictions on the production of ethnographic writings, and Sahagún’s encyclopedic work in progress, which would later become the Historia general or Florentine Codex, was confiscated and subjected to review (Poole Citation2018, 3–4; Baudot Citation1995, 505; Heyden Citation1994, xxx–xxxi; Terraciano Citation2019, 7).
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Stephanie Schmidt
Stephanie Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She writes about New Spain of the sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, focusing on Franciscan literature, Nahua song and historiography, and religious dramas in Spanish and Nahuatl. Her research has been supported by the Humanities Institute of the University at Buffalo and the Mellon Foundation. She is the author of Child martyrs and militant evangelization in New Spain: missionary narratives, Nahua perspectives, forthcoming from the University of Texas Press.