The Legacy of Mesoamerica History and Culture of a Native American Civilization, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 6 INDIGENOUS LITERATURE FROM COLONIAL MESOAMERICA 243

Ruiz de Alarcón arrested and punished Nahua religious practitioners, men and women
who he believed were in league with the Devil. He understood enough Nahuatl to
write down many of the chants these specialists used in their rites of curing and div-
ination. The result is an invaluable collection of Nahuatl ritual poetry, though one
gained under unfortunate circumstances.
The chants employ a specialized vocabulary characterized by elaborate metaphors.
The practitioners personified the various phenomena involved in the ritual. They
granted identities, for example, to the patient’s injury or illness, the medicines being
used, the fire and the offerings of incense and tobacco that were made to it, and the
curer’s own hands and fingers. They invoked mythological precedents for the situation
at hand, thus casting it in grandiose terms and bringing the sacred power of the myth
to bear on the problem.
One of the simplest of the ritual cures is this procedure that a woman named
María Salome used for curing eye problems. First she addresses the pain, personify-
ing it as a series of serpents and thus giving a concrete form to the patient’s sensations.

that which germinates, that which lies germinating,

that which is the maintenance, the life, of the vassal.

And that which is life,

there is no more,

it has gone away, it has perished. (Sahagún 1950–1982: VI, 35–36; trans. by L. Burkhart)

The final appeal to the rain gods at the end of the oration goes as follows:

Oh master, oh precious noble, oh giver of gifts,

may your heart concede it, may it do its job,

may you console the earth,

and all that live upon it,

that travel about on the surface of the earth.

I call to you, I cry out to you,

you who occupy the four quarters,

you the green ones, you the givers of gifts,

you of the mountains, you of the caves!

May you carry yourselves here,

may you come, may you come to console the vassals,

may you come to water things on the earth!

For they lie watching, they lie crying out,

the earth, the animals, the herbs, the stalks.

For they all lie trusting in you.

May you hurry, oh gods, oh our lords! (Sahagún 1950–1982:VI, 40; trans. revised by

L. Burkhart)

The repetition, the elaborate imagery, and the tone of desperation serve not only the aes-

thetic purpose of creating beautiful and moving poetry. Such a text would have the power also

to get Tlaloc’s attention and oblige him to send the rains.