Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:40:20.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mira lo que hace el diablo: The Devil in Mexican Popular Culture, 1750-1856*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera
Sonya Lipsett-Rivera*
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As she lay bleeding to death from an accidental knife wound, María Josefa Vargas said to her husband: “Look what the Devil has done (Mira lo que hace el diablo).” María Josefa and her husband, José Rosario, were both indigenous, natives of Almoloya and Tenancingo respectively, and at the time living in Malinalco in the Valley of Mexico. They had been fighting playfully over some meat that María Josefa had bought to make cecina Mock anger and a very sharp knife made for bad companions, and José Rosario accidentally cut María Josefa in the leg.

María Josefa's words are one of those elusive examples of the key place occupied by the Devil in Mexican popular culture in the late eighteenth century. By the late colonial period the Devil seems to have become more of a concern for rural Mexicans, particularly within indigenous communities, than he had been before. Once a European import, the Devil had become a more evident part of the symbols used by Indians in the countryside. He had become less of a concern to Church and State authorities and was rather used to explain accidents, such as the one cited above, but more frequently as an excuse or a reason for unacceptable conduct, such as violence or illicit sexuality.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , October 2002 , pp. 201 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was made possible by generous grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Carleton University.

References

1 Cecina is a dish made with extremely thinly cut beef

2 Archivo General de la Nación, Ramo Criminal, volume 190, exp. 29, folios 506–516, Malinalco, 1794 (hereafter AGN Criminal, vol. 190, exp. 29, fol. 506–516, Malinalco, 1794).

3 These changing concepts are explained by Burton, Jeffrey Russell in his series of books on the Devil: The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977),Google Scholar Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).

4 Cervantes, Femando, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 37.Google Scholar

5 See MacCormack, Sabine, Religion in the Andes, Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991),CrossRefGoogle Scholar passim; and for New France, Goddard, Peter A., “The Devil in New France: Jesuit Demonology, 1611–50” Canadian Historical Review 78:1 (March 1997), pp. 40–62.Google Scholar

6 Fernando Cervantes has provided the most important work on this subject to date. See also Behar, Ruth, “Sex and Sin, Witchcraft and the Devil in late-Colonial Mexico,” American Ethnologist 14:1 (1987), pp. 34–54.Google Scholar

7 Burkhart, Louise, The Slippery Earth, Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), p. 40.Google Scholar See also the article by Lisa Sousa in this same volume.

8 Russell, , >Satan, p. 187;Satan,+p.+187;>Google Scholar see also Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons, The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 81.Google Scholar

9 Burkhart, , The Slippery Earth, p. 36.Google Scholar

10 Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, p. 40.Google Scholar

11 Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, p. 46.Google Scholar

12 Burkhart, , The Slippery Earth, p. 63.Google Scholar

13 Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, pp. 56, 37.Google Scholar

14 Behar, “Sex and Sin,” pp. 43–46. Interestingly, Russell reports in Satan, p. 190, that in the fourth and fifth centuries, people began to represent the Devil as a dog among many other types of representations. It is true that the Devil is also known to have appeared as a black dog in Spain; but such instances hardly portrayed him as friendly; rather, his attributes emphasized malevolence and harm. See Sánchez Ortega, María Helena, “Woman as Source of “Evil” in Counter-Reformation Spain,” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain (edited by Cruz, Anne J. and Perry, Mary Elizabeth, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 202.Google Scholar

15 Ingham, John, Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in Central Mexico (Austin: Univer-sity of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar; Taggart, James, Nahuat Myth and Social Structure (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), p. 63 Google Scholar

16 Taggart, , Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, pp. 79–80. See also Burkhart, passim.Google Scholar

17 Monte is an area of scrubland.

18 Muchembled, Robert, “Satanic Myth and Cultural Reality,” in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, edited by Ankarloo, Bengt and Henningsen, Gustav (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 149 Google Scholar

19 Fabian, Francisco y Fuero, , Colección de providencias diocesanas del Obispado de Puebla de los Angeles (Puebla: Imprenta del Real Seminario Palafoxiana, 1770), pp. 451–452.Google Scholar

20 Taggart, , Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, pp. 79, 83–84.Google Scholar

21 Muchembled, , “Satanic Myth and Cultural Reality,” pp. 139, 147–148;Google Scholar see also Goddard, p. 42–43.

22 Behar, , “Sex and Sin,” p. 44;Google Scholar Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, pp. 125–148.Google Scholar

23 Taylor, William B., Magistrates of the Sacred, Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 19.Google Scholar

24 Delumeau, Paul, La Peur en occident (Paris: Fayard, 1978), p. 232 Google Scholar as cited in Weber, Alison “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, p. 171–172.Google Scholar

25 Velasco, Sherry, Demons, Nausea and Resistance in the Autobiography of Isabel de Jesús, 1611–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

26 Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil, Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 172.Google Scholar

27 Roper, , Oedipus and the Devil, p. 172.Google Scholar

28 Goddard, , “The Devil in New France,” p. 43.Google Scholar

29 Goddard, , “The Devil in New France,” p. 48.Google Scholar

30 Christian, William A. Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Haliczer, Stephen, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 281.Google Scholar

32 Russell, , Mephistopheles, pp. 31, 77, 80.Google Scholar

33 Callahan, William J., Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 30.Google Scholar Spanish Jesuits denounced the eighteenth-century reform movement as ‘Jansenist’.

34 Callahan, , Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, pp. 67–68, 75.Google Scholar

35 Quintana, Fray Agustín de, Confesionario en lengua Mixe Con una construcción de las Oraciones de la Doctrina Christiana y un Compendio de Voces Mixes para enseñarse a pronunciar dichas lenguas (Puebla: Viuda de Ortega, 1738), pp. 9, 11, 35–36, 46, 56, 72.Google Scholar

36 Doctor Don Juan Anselmo del Moral y Altra, Castillo de, Platicas doctrinales de contrición, confession, y satisfaccion, y dos sermones de penitencia (Puebla: Don Pedro de la Rosa, 1792), p. 53;Google Scholar de Alamín, Fray Felis, Consuelo de Penitentes y alivio de confessores (Puebla: Colegio Real, 1765), pp. 37, 40–41.Google Scholar

37 Reis, p. 25–27; Baroja, Julio Caro The World of the Witches, translated by Glendinning, Nigel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 71;Google Scholar and Velasco, , Demons, Nausea and Resistance, p. 29.Google Scholar

38 As cited in Velasco, , Demons, Nausea and Resistance, p. 29.Google Scholar

39 Clark, , Thinking with Demons, pp. 112–118.Google Scholar

40 Ortega, Sánchez, “Woman as Source of ‘Evil,’” pp. 205, 211.Google Scholar

41 Weber, , “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” p. 172.Google Scholar

42 Vives, Juan Luis, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1948, 4th edition) p. 57;Google Scholar de Trujillo, Fray Thomas, Libro Llamado Reprobación de Trajes, Con un Tratado de Lymosnas (Navarra: no publisher, 1563), p. 87.Google Scholar

43 Paseos are promenades.

44 Moles, Don Joaquín, Doctrina Christiana para niños y adultos, a la mente de San Carlos Borromeo, y del catolicismo romano (Madrid: Imprenta de Pantaleon Aznar, 1769), p. 127.Google Scholar

45 Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, p. 19,Google Scholar Velasco, , Demons, Nausea and Resistance, p. 40;Google Scholar see also the article by Rosalva Loreto López in this same issue.

46 Moles, , Doctrina Christiana para niños y adultos, p. 56.Google Scholar

47 AGN, Criminal, vol. 80, exp. 19, fol. 561–570, Tulancingo 1811; AGN, Criminal, vol. 98, exp. 11, fol. 351–376, Tetepango, 1809; AGN Criminal, vol. 184, exp. 17, fol. 408–501v, Actopan, 1816.

48 Penyak, Lee Michael, “Criminal Sexuality in Central Mexico, 1750–1850” (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1993), pp. 234–235.Google Scholar

49 AGN, Criminal, vol. 98, exp. 11, fol. 351–376, Tetepango, 1809; AGN, Criminal, vol. 63, exp. 4, fol. 80–219, Tulancingo, 1803–1809; AGN, Criminal, vol. 624, exp. 1, fol. 1–37, Taxco 1756.

50 The analysis provided by Lyndal Roper, pp. 3 and 231, is instructive. Allusions to the Devil in such settings often comes first from the accused, and then this reference provokes a dialogue between the interrogator(s) and the accused in which both parties understand their roles and the language.

51 AGN, Criminal, vol. 47, exp. 7, fol. 208v-210, Cuernavaca, 1818.

52 AGN, Criminal, vol. 194, exp. 17, fol. 261-262v, Texcoco, 1778.

53 AGN, Criminal, vol. 63, exp. 4, fol. 80–219, Tulancingo, 1803–1809.

54 Francisco Fabián y Fuero, Edicto a Nuestro Regente de Estudios, dado en el Curato de San Josef de Xalapa, 2 abril, 1773, Colección Puebla, Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Condumex; Don Manuel Ignacio del Campillo, González, Edicto del Exmo e llimo Señor Obispo de Puebla (México: Ontiveros, 1812), p. 7;Google Scholar Anonymous, , Breve Instrucción a los Christianos Casadas y útiles advertencias a los que pretenden serlo (Puebla: Don Pedro de la Rosa, 1790), p. viii.Google Scholar

55 AGN, Criminal vol. 22, exp. 13, fol. 210–223, Pachuca, 1808–1810.

56 Taggart, , Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, p. 63.Google Scholar

57 Archivo Judicial de Puebla 1846, no expediente number, Huauchinango 13 April 1846 [hereafter AJP].

58 For a complaint about this type of treatment see AGN, Criminal, vol. 222, exp. 15, fol. 283-313v Coatepec 1771 ; see also Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, “De Obra y Palabra: Patterns of Insults in Mexico, 1750–1856,” The Americas 54:4 (April 1997), p. 527.Google Scholar

59 Cervantes, , The Devil in the New World, p. 37;Google Scholar Burkhart, , The Slippery Earth, pp. 25–26, 40.Google Scholar

60 AGN, Criminal vol. 122, fol. 300v-301v, Tenango, 1778.

61 Clark, , Thinking with Demons, pp. 69–79 Google Scholar

62 I thank Father Brian Bélanger for this information.

63 Roper, , Oedipus and the Devil, p. 177.Google Scholar

64 Fabián, y Fuero, , Colección, pp. 450–451.Google Scholar

65 Kagan, Richard L., Lucrecia's Dreams. Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 35–37;Google Scholar Antonio de Oviedo, Padre Juan, Destierro de ignorancias, en orden al mas acertado, y fácil uso de los Santos Sacramentos de la confesión y comunión Con un modo fácil para recibir con fruto estos Santos Sacramentos (México: Imprenta Nueva de la Biblioteca Mexicana, en frente de San Augustín, 1755, 11th edition), p. 13;Google Scholar Carta, Padre Gabino, Guía de confesores, practica de administrar los sacramentos, en especial el de la Penitencia (México: Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1660), p. 30v.Google Scholar

66 Anonymous, , Reglas de la buena crianza civil y Christiana Utilísimas para todos, y singularmente para los que cuiden de la educación de los Niños, a quienes las deberían explicar, inspirándoles insensiblemente su practica en todas ocurrencias (Puebla: Officina de Don Pedro de la Rosa, 1802), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

67 Roper, , Oedipus and the Devil, p. 177.Google Scholar

68 AGN, Criminal, vol. 189, exp. 7, fol. 308–329, Malinalco, 1808; Archivo Judicial del Tribunal Superior del Districto Federal, Penales, vol. 8, exp. 11, México, 31 March, 1794: AGN, Criminal, vol. 142, exp. 15, fol. 468-Chalco, 1812.; AGN, Criminal, vol. 54, exp. 11, fol. 161–197, Tetepango, 1778; AJP, 1846, no exp. number, Huauchinango, 1846.

69 AGN, Criminal, vol. 18, exp. 11, fol. 419–427, Malinalco, 1797.

70 See for example, Quintana, , Confesionario en lengua Mixe, pp. 46, 56, 72.Google Scholar

71 Taggart, , Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, p. 79–80 Google Scholar; Burkhart, The Slippery Earth, passim.

72 Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), chapter 7.Google Scholar

73 AGN, Criminal, vol. 624, exp. 1, fol. 1–37, Taxco, 1756; AGN, Criminal, vol. 184, exp. 17, fol. 408-501V, Actopan, 1816; AJP, 1850, no exp. number, Acatlán Juicio en contra Ambrosio Bravo; AGN, Criminal, vol. 98, exp. 11, fol. 351–376, Tetepango, 1809; AGN, Criminal, vol. 80, exp. 19,fol. 561–570, Tulancingo, 1811.

74 Clark, , Thinking with Demons, p. 87.Google Scholar

75 AGN, Criminal, vol. 62, exp. 7, fol. 207–244, Tulancingo, 1803.

76 See Knab, Timothy J., A War of Witches. A Journey into the Underworld of the Contemporary Aztecs (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993),Google Scholar passim, for a view of contemporary understanding of caves.

77 AGN, Criminal, vol. 22, exp. 13, fol. 201–223, Pachuca, 1808–1810.

78 AJP, 1836, packet 2, no exp. number, San Salvador el Verde.

79 AGN, Criminal, vol. 142, exp. 15, fol. 468, Chalco, 1812.

80 Taggart, , Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

81 de la Cerda, Juan, Libro intitulado vida política de todos los estados de mugeres: en el qual dan muy provechosos y Christianos documentos y avisos, para criarse y conservarse devidamente las Mugeres en sus estados (Alcalá de Henares: Casa de Juan Gracian, 1599), p. 344v.Google Scholar

82 AGN, Criminal, vol. 190, exp. 19, fol. 322–333, Calimaya, 1770.

83 Cerda, , Libro intitulado vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, pp. 274–274v.Google Scholar

84 AGN, Criminal, vol. 137, exp. 6, fol. 81v-84, Xochimilco, 1808.