CHAPTER 5 THE COLONIAL PERIOD IN MESOAMERICA 193Figure 5.4 Colonial church in the town of San Pedro y San Pablo Teposcolula, Oaxaca. The
resident Dominican friars ministered to the town’s native population from the large, arcaded
open chapel, now partially ruined. Photo provided by authors.
But they did not undergo a conversion experience, in the sense of responding
to a personal spiritual crisis by consciously and intentionally replacing one entire
belief system with another. The fact that in Mesoamerica the social structure of the
native communities generally remained intact, with local leaders retaining control
over community affairs, probably helped to keep people from experiencing the tran-
sition to Spanish rule as a traumatic crisis in their own lives. Traditional religion was
more a matter of collective, community rites and celebrations than of an individu-
alized, personal faith. Christianity too would be above all a collective, public enter-
prise associated with the identity of the community, now centered on a patron saint
rather than a tutelary divinity.
The native people interpreted Christianity in terms that were more or less com-
patible with their own cultures. This process was facilitated by the fact that the friars
preached to them in their own languages. Friars, in collaboration with native assis-
tants, produced many books and manuscripts in the native languages (Figure 5.5).
The process of translation subtly altered Christian concepts and brought them more
in line with indigenous understandings. For example, in the Nahuatl language the
word tlahtlacolliwas used to convey the Christian concept of “sin.” The Nahuatl word
meant “error” or “crime” or “destruction” in a much broader sense and alluded to
a general process of disintegration and decay that affected all social and natural