Staging Christ's Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico

Staging Christ's Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico explores the Passion plays performed inNahuatl (Aztec) by Indigenous Mexicans living under Spanish colonial occupation. Though sourced fromEuropean writings and devotional practices that emphasized the suffering of Christ and his mother, thisNahuatl theatrical tradition grounded the Passion story in the Indigenous corporate community. Passionplays had courted controversy in Europe since their twelfth-century origin, but in New Spain they facedCatholic authorities who questioned the spiritual and intellectual capacity of Indigenous people and, inthe eighteenth century, sought to suppress these performances. Six surviving eighteenth-century scripts,variants of an original play possibly composed early in the seventeenth century, reveal how Nahuaspassed along this model text while modifying it with new dialogue, characters, and stage techniques.Louise M. Burkhart explores the way Nahuas merged the Passion story with their language, culturalconstructs, social norms, and religious practices while also responding to surveillance by Catholicchurchmen. Analytical chapters trace significant themes through the six plays and key these to acomposite play in English included in the volume. A cast with over fifty distinct roles acted out events extending from Palm Sunday to Christ's death on thecross. One actor became a localized embodiment of Jesus through a process of investiture and mimesisthat carried aspects of pre-Columbian materialized divinity into the later colonial period. The play told afar richer version of the Passion story than what later colonial Nahuas typically learned from their priestsor catechists. And by assimilating Jesus to an Indigenous, or macehualli, identity, the players enacted aprotest against colonial rule. The situation in eighteenth-century New Spain presents both a unique confrontation betweenIndigenous communities and Enlightenment era religious reformers and a new chapter in an age-oldpower game between popular practice and religious orthodoxy. By focusing on how Nahuas localizedthe universalizing narrative of Christ's Passion, Staging Christ's Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico offers an unusually in-depth view of religious life under colonial rule. Burkhart's accompanying website alsomakes available transcriptions and translations of the six Nahuatl-language plays, four Spanish-languageplays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation,providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material. Comments restricted to single page plays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation, providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material