¹ Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter cited as AGN], Criminal vol. 204, exp. 13, fols. 384r-392r (indigenous town council of Jonacatepec, Cuernavaca region vs. bachiller don José Manuel de Sotomayor, 1818). The description of a priest as a wolf in pastor’s guise seems to be Biblical, indicating that whoever used this phrase had internalized a fair amount of Christian imagery and ideology. In fact, William Taylor, who kindly suggested that I look for this quote’s Biblical roots, has seen similar language used elsewhere in New Spain (personal communication). Recourse to several Bible concordances, such as Harper’s Topical Concordance, Joy, Charles R., comp. (New York, 1940),Google Scholar failed to uncover a passage with the exact wording employed by the Jonacatepec petitioners. On the other hand, wolves and erring pastors (or shepherds) do turn up with some frequency in both the Old and New Testaments. The Jonacatepec quote, then, seems to be a composite of sentiments expressed in a number of specific verses, such as Ezekiel 22:27, which reads “Her Princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain,” combined with Ezekiel 34:3, “Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.” The wolf-like pastor of the quote is moreover the antithesis of the good shepherd described in Isaiah 40:11, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are young.” It is possible, of course, that a phrase more like the one used in Jonacatepec might be found in materials used to teach Christianity to the indigenous people, perhaps some variation of Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

² Paul, III: “Indians are Men,” in The Spanish Tradition in America, Gibson, Charles, ed. (Columbia, SC, 1968), p. 120.Google Scholar

³ de Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés, “Sepúlveda: Just War Against Barbarians (c.1544),” in Spanish Tradition, p. 105.Google Scholar

⁴ For a succinct discussion of the apocalyptic vision of the Franciscans, see West, Delno C., “Medieval Ideas of Apocalyptic Mission and the Early Franciscans in Mexico,” The Americas, 45:3 (Jan. 1989), 293–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Ricard, Robert, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley, 1966).Google Scholar

⁶ Stafford, Poole C.M., Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 128–29,Google Scholar discusses the tendency of the clergy to blame the indigenous people for the shortcomings of evangelization.

⁷ de Alva, J. Jorge Klor, “Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, Perry, Mary Elizabeth and Cruz, Anne J., eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar Klor de Alva goes on to state that the strategy was to “produce social and political effects that favored the interests in stability and productivity of those in power.”

⁸ de Alva, J. Jorge Klor, “Religious Rationalization and the Conversions of the Nahuas: Social Organization and Colonial Epistemology,” in To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, Carrasco, Davíd, ed. (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1991), pp. 238–40.Google Scholar Among many other works by Klor de Alva on this subject see “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation in New Spain: Toward a Typology of Aztec Responses to Christianity,” in The Inca and Aztec States: Anthropology and History, Collier, George A., Rosaldo, Renato I., and Wirth, John D., eds. (New York, 1982), pp. 345–66.Google Scholar See also Burkhart, Louise, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in the Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson, 1989)Google Scholar; Clendinnen, Inga, “Ways to the Sacred: Reconstructing ‘Religion’ in Sixteenth Century Mexico,” History and Anthropology, 5 (1990), 105–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lockhart, James, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, 1992).Google Scholar For instance, Lockhart believes that “conversion” is not the proper term to describe the process whereby the Nahua took on various elements of Christianity, but rather “instruction or indoctrination.” He argues that, due to their own traditions of recognizing the primacy of the gods of victorious conquerors, most were quite willing to convert, or in other words to agree to become Christians. But this does not mean that they would have agreed to abandon all previous religious beliefs. “One expected a conqueror to impose his god in some fashion, without fully displacing one’s own; …,” p. 203.

⁹ For an excellent study of the Provincial Councils and attitudes of clergy, see Poole, , Pedro Moya de Contreras. For instance, on pp. 135–136,Google Scholar Poole reports that Pedro de Feria, Bishop of Chiapas, believed that the friars should be both temporal and spiritual fathers to the indigenous people. It is clear that however much the clergy might lament the difficulty of achieving this end, its inevitability was assumed.

¹⁰ This will soon change with the appearance of a monograph by historian William B. Taylor. His book will present a densely researched investigation of the dimensions of clergy-indigenous parishioners in New Spain. For studies of colonial New Spain which do address the topic of temporal relations in some way see Gibson’s, Charles account of “Religion” in The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford, 1964), pp. 98–135 Google Scholar; and Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979), esp. p. 19.Google Scholar For solid recent studies of the church in New Spain, see Schwaller, John F., Origins of Church Wealth in Mexico: Ecclesiastical Revenues and Church Finances, 1523–1600 (Albuquerque, 1985)Google Scholar; and idem, The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque, 1987). For comparison with other regions, see Clendinnen, Inga, “Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan Ideology and Missionary Violence in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan,” Past and Present, 94 (1982), 27–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge, 1987); and Van Oss, Adriaan C., Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524–1821 (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

¹¹ The main sources used in this study were found in the Biblioteca Nacional de México, Fondo Reservado (BNM/FR), from Mexico’s Biblioteca Nacional, Archivo Histórico (BNM/AH), and Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación, especially the ramos Bienes Nacionales, Civil, Hospital de Jesús, and Indios. Manuscripts from the Latin American Library at Tulane University and the Newberry Library of Chicago also were consulted. Some of the cases utilized for this article undoubtedly would have led to investigation by the Inquisition, but the majority would not. Instead, they were handled by either ecclesiastical or civil courts.

¹² William Taylor, personal communication, believes that the clergy-parishioner relations in the Cuernavaca area were more heavily contested than anywhere else in central New Spain. Taylor’s observations are based on his own much broader study of clergy and indigenous people in late colonial Mexico. While my own more narrowly focused comparison of the Cuernavaca and Taxco regions did not yield the same perspective, I am quite willing to defer to Professor Taylor on this point. The relative numbers of priest-parishioner cases from these two areas in the later eighteenth century, however, do seem to support Taylor’s contention; records of disputes at the AGN are more numerous for Cuernavaca than Taxco during the later colonial era, which may suggest that relations were becoming more con-flictive in the former than the latter region.

¹³ For the exact dates of foundation see Benitez, José R., Historia gráfica de la Nueva España (Cámara oficial Española de comercio en los estados unidos de México, 1929)Google Scholar; Gerhard, Peter, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 95–96 Google Scholar; and Riley, G. Micheal, Fernando Cortés and the Marquesado in Morelos (Albuquerque, 1973), p. 30.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Gerhard, , Historical Geography, p. 253 Google Scholar; Toussaint, Manuel, Taxco (México, 1931), p. 26.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Schwaller, , Church and Clergy, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar A series of Papal Bulls had established the right of regular clergy to act as parish priests: Alias felices of Leo X, April 25, 1521, Exponi nobis fecisti of Adrian VI, May 9, 1522, and Exponi nobis nuper of Pius V, March 24, 1567. According to Greenleaf, Richard E., The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque, 1969), p. 153,Google Scholar the latter was the result of the effort by order clergy and Philip II to have the Council of Trent’s pronouncement that only priests under the authority of bishops could administer the sacraments. For more details, see Ennis, Arthur, OSA, “The Conflict between Regular and Secular Clergy,” in The Roman Catholic Church in Colonial Latin America, Greenleaf, Richard E., ed. (New York, 1971), pp. 63–72 Google Scholar; and Shiels, W. Eugene, SJ, “Seventeenth-Century Legal Crisis in the Missions,” in ibid., pp. 108–21.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Schwaller, , Church and Clergy, p. 70,Google Scholar states that friars serving as parish priests were called doctrineros, while seculars were called curas. But by the early seventeenth century in the Cuernavaca and Taxco regions, cura was the term used for parish clergy regardless of their affiliation.

¹⁷ Such information can be found in the Archivo General de Indias [hereafter cited as AGI], Audiencia de México leg. 100, ramo 2, tomo XI: “Relación de los partidos y provinciones que ay en este arzobispado de México de curas y vicarios, 5 marzo 1575” (language skills of priests of the Taxco region); AGI Patronato Real leg. 182, no. 1, ramo 4 (same for the towns of the Cuernavaca region, 1573). According to a royal cédula of 1637, “all religious who now exercise the office of curate in a doctrina, or would do so in the future, must submit to an examination in doctrine and [indigenous] language,” quoted in Shiels, , “Seventeenth-Century Legal Crisis,” p. 117.Google Scholar Burkhart, Slippery Earth, presents a fascinating analysis of techniques used by such bilingual clergy, as well as the interpretive misunderstandings that resulted on both sides of the dialogue.

¹⁸ de Sahagún, Fray Bernardino, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Book 3—The Origin of the Gods (Salt Lake City, 1978), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar According to Book 10—The People (Salt Lake City, 1961), a good sorcerer was “a person of trust—serious, respected, revered, dignified, unreviled, not subject to insults” (p. 31).

¹⁹ Carrasco, Davíd, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition (Chicago, 1982), p. 172.Google Scholar

²⁰ For comparison with other regions, see Orellana, Sandra, The Tzutujil Mayas: Continuity and Change, 1250–1630 (Norman, 1984), p. 199 Google Scholar; Spores, Ronald, The Mixtees in Ancient and Modern Times (Norman, 1984), p. 145 Google Scholar; and Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 157–58.Google Scholar The tendency of indigenous people to identify the clergy as protectors in this way continued into the national period. See Powell, T.G., “Priests and Peasants in Central Mexico: Social Conflict During ‘La Reforma,’” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57:2 (May 1977), 298–313,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. pp. 297 and 307.

²¹ “De la naturaleza del indio. Al Rey Nuestro Señor, por Don Juan de Palafox Y Mendoza, Obispo de la Puebla de Los Angeles, del Consejo de su Majestad, etc.,” in Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México: La Inquisición de México, García, Genaro, ed. (México, 1974).Google Scholar According to the bishop, the vices lacking in the indigenous people were those of covetousness, ambition, arrogance, envy, blasphemy, gluttony, and sensuality.

²² AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 822, exp. 7, fol. 52r.

²³ AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 1110, exp. 1, fol. 58r (officers of Cacayotlan and Tlacotecapan, Taxco, the Archbishop, 1636; a Nahuatl petition).

²⁴ BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 108, exp. 1483, #4 (Investigation of the character of fray Pedro de Arana of Cuernavaca, 1751).

²⁵ AGN Hospital de Jesús (HJ) leg. 417, exp. 32 (fray Pedro de Arana is among nine friars from Cuernavaca, Xiuhtepec, Tepoztlan, Mazatepec, Yautepec, Yecapixtla, and Jonacatepec seeking assistance in the wake of the devastating epidemic of 1737); BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 108, exp. 1490, #2 (fray Alonso de Rio Frío supports the efforts of the council of Mazatepec to win cabecera de doctrina status, 1699); and AGN HJ vol. 82, exp. 20, fol. 12 (the secular priest Bachiller Agustín Mateo de Villanueva, vicar and curate of Tlaquiltenango, supports the efforts of his parishioners to use funds from their cajas de comunidad, community treasury, to make up tribute arrears resulting from a combination of crop failure, drought, and epidemic, 1796–1798). For comparison with other areas see a Nahuatl language petition dated 1620 held at the Newberry Library, Ayer Collection MS 1481, F(4)2, a petition concerning the celebration of the festival of the immaculate conception in the barrios of San Juan Aquiyahuac, San Felipe Xolloc, and Santiago Xicohtenco [documents out of context, exact location not clear]. The petitioners emphasize the holiness and protectiveness of the local guardián, fray Francisco Oliguera. See also Tulane Latin American Library, Viceregal and Ecclesiastical Manuscript Collection (VEMC) leg. 47, exp. 78, fols, lr-vta, a petition from the indigenous town council of Chicontepec dated April 6, 1788, requesting that an order transferring their curate to another parish be rescinded. This curate, don Nicolás Mariano Ladrón de Guevara, is characterized as a devout, helpful man who, among other things, had been teaching the children and town officers how to read and write in Spanish. The ecclesiastical authorities, however, denied the request. León-Portilla, Miguel, Los Franciscanos vistos por el hombre Náhuatl: Testimonios indígenas del siglo XVI (México, 1985), pp. 37–40,Google Scholar discusses similar attitudes.

²⁶ For a discussion of the activities of clergy involved on the side of indigenous petitioners in the Puebla region see Taylor, William B., “Conflict and Balance in District Politics: Tecalli and the Sierra Norte de Puebla in the Eighteenth Century,” in Five Centuries of Law and Politics in Central Mexico, Spores, Ronald and Hassig, Ross, eds. (Nashville, 1984), pp. 89–93.Google Scholar

²⁷ The second Provincial Council of New Spain, which met beginning in 1565, voiced a concern about the abuses of the repartimiento which were later echoed by clergy in the Cuernavaca and Taxco regions. These same misgivings were stated even more forcefully by participants in the third Provincial Council. See Poole, , Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 130,Google Scholar 176–87.

²⁸ For example, see AGN Civil vol. 1608, exp. 10 (Tlayacac has been trying to lessen its repartimiento obligation for years by inflating the number of exempted church workers, 1725).

²⁹ See AGN Indios vol. 13, exp. 242, fol. 13r (Tazamaluca, Taxco region, local priest supports the council’s contention that population loss has invalidated existing repartimiento levies, 1641); AGN Indios vol. 11, exp. 311, fol. 253v (curate supports contention that population loss should result in reduction of obligation for the Taxco mine repartimiento of Coatlan, Cuernavaca jurisdiction, 1639); vol. 11, exp. 345, fol. 28 Ir (the same kind of support for petitioners from Tlayacac, Cuernavaca jurisdiction, from padre fray Hernando de Salazar, 1639); and AGN HJ leg. 345, exp. 36, fols. lr-7v (unnamed curate of Tlaltizapan helps convince authorities to exempt the town from the Cuautla mine repartimiento because of epidemic-related population loss, 1755).

³⁰ AGN Indios vol. 29, exp. 144, fols. 124r-124v, and exp. 167, fols. 140r-141r (San Lorenzo and fray Joseph de Villar of Cuernavaca to the viceroy, 1688). For similar cases, see AGN Indios vol. 29, exp. 29, fols. 38r-39v (Tlaltizapan and fray Bartolomé de Ayturrieta to the viceroy, 1684); AGN HJ vol. 86, exp. 56, fols. lr-9v (San Esteban Tetelpan and fray Pedro de Arana of Cuernavaca concerning exemption from the Taxco mine repartimiento, 1711–1713); and AGN HJ leg. 208, exps. 210 and 220 (Ticuman and fray Joseph Hurtado de Mendoza to the Audiencia concerning population loss, church damage, and the Cuautla mine repartimiento, 1732).

³¹ AGN Civil vol. 1505, exp. 3, fols. lr-5r (Tepoztlan and fray Joseph Marcelo Muñíz to the viceroy, 1720); AGN Civil vol. 1505, exp. 3, fols. 27v-31v (Tepoztlan and fray Miguel Gómez de Cervantes protest the abrogation of the repartimiento exemption, 1723); AGN Civil vol. 1659, exp. 6, fols. 15r-15v (fray Miguel Hurtado de Mendoza and Tepoztlan on the poor state of the church, early July 1725), and fols. 16r-17v (fray Juan Díaz Leal, prior of Oaxtepec, on the rigors of mine repartimiento labor, early July 1725). Certain curates continued to support Tepoztlan’s council even after the labor exemption was revoked in 1723, but outbreaks of violence in the summer of 1725 neutralized the efforts of these friars.

³² Possession of a fine church was one criteria of “true” pueblo status during the colonial period. See Wood, Stephanie Gail, “Corporate Adjustments in Colonial Mexican Indian Towns: Toluca Region, 1550–1810” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1984), pp. 188–90.Google Scholar Similar criteria were applied to the altepetl (city-province) of pre-contact central Mesoamerica. See Schroeder, Susan Parry, “Chalco and Sociopolitical Concepts in Chimalpahin: Analysis of the Work of a Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Historian of Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1984), pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

³² AGN HJ leg. 210, exp. 46 (four officers of Tlapallan, Cuernavaca, to the Gobernador del Estado, c. 1607, a Nahuatl petition). Though church tribunals normally heard cases involving the clergy, civilian authorities could gain jurisdiction by virtue of a recurso de fuerzo, “a plea before the audiencia that rights guaranteed by royal law were being abridged,” Borah, Woodrow, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley, 1983), p. 44.Google Scholar On the same subject, see also Scholes, , “An Overview of the Colonial Church,” p. 25 Google Scholar; and Farriss, Nancy M., Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759–1821: The Crisis of Ecclesiastical Privilege (London, 1968), pp. 70–83.Google Scholar

³⁴ AGN HJ leg. 210, exp. 20 (Otlipan to the Gobernador del Estado Jerónimo Leardo, c. 1607, a Nahuatl petition).

³⁵ This was a common complaint in colonial New Spain. For instance, manipulation of the election process was laid at the door of a priest of Jalostotitlan, Guadalajara region, in 1611; see Anderson, Arthur J.O., Berdan, Frances, and Lockhart, James, Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley, 1976), p. 167.Google Scholar This practice is also identified in Oaxaca—see Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, p. 137 Google Scholar—and was a common complaint in litigation in central New Spain. See Borah, , Justice by Insurance, pp. 163,Google Scholar 200.

³⁶ For telling examples, see AGN HJ leg. 115, exp. 7, fols. 3r-14r (council of Mazatepec vs. fray Pedro Santos y Vegil, Franciscan, accused of unduly influencing the election of 1723); leg. 106, exp. 8, fol. 12 (petitioners of Texalpa vs. fray Antonio de León, accused of illegally forcing the re-election of a governor, 1733); AGN Civil vol. 2182, exp. 10, fol. 6 (council of San Andrés, Cuernavaca, charged that a curate had forced them to select an unqualified person as fiscal, 1764); AGN HJ leg. 106, exp. 19, fol. 16 (it is alleged that a curate of Xiuhtepec worked against the election of a governor who had accused him of wrongdoing, 1772); and leg. 106, exp. 20, fol. 27 (curate of Oaxtepec accused of conniving with a Spanish teniente to force the election of a favored governor, 1773). A parallel situation was offered by a friar’s refusal to assist in the refoundation of one of Cuernavaca’s indigenous cofradías. By refusing to assist in the naming of new cofradía officers, he derailed the whole effort (though some local secular priests backed the indigenous cause, suggesting possible manipulation of secular-regular struggles): BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 108,. exp. 1483, #2 (Tlaltenango vs. the guardián of Cuernavaca’s Franciscan monastery, 1749).

³⁷ AGN HJ vol. 85, exp. 21, fol. 20 (it is alleged that the governor, don Nicolás Cortés, owed his office to the influence of local friars, 1711); AGN Civil vol. 1823, exp. 13, fol. 22 (opponents of Governor don Nicolás de Rojas claim he is maintained in office by the influence of the friars, 1724); AGN Civil vol. 2175, exp. 5, fols. 81 (friars accused of ongoing support for pro-Taxco mine repartimiento Rojas governors, 1720–1724).

³⁸ AGN Civil vol. 1608, exps. 10–12, fol. 274 (riots in Tepoztlan, 1725).

³⁹ Such violence may have been more common elsewhere in New Spain, and more instances may be uncovered in Cuernavaca and Taxco. Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, pp. 119–20,Google Scholar remarks that “… the voices of spiritual reason and moral authority counted for little in subduing village outbursts. There are many more cases of priests shoved aside with cross in hand and words rebuffed than cases of priests swaying the angry mob in the heat of battle.”

⁴⁰ Schwaller, , Origins of Church Wealth, pp. 84–85,Google Scholar 95, 104, detailed descriptions of the arancel appear among documents related to several of the cases cited below.

⁴¹ See Borah, , Justice by Insurance, p. 161 Google Scholar ff., for examples of these sorts of cases. See also litigation records held at Tulane’s Latin American Library, VEMC Leg. 36, exp. 45 (Santa María Chimecatitlan, Puebla, 1808); VEMC Leg. 37, exp. 15 (Cholula, 1756); VEMC Leg. 47, exp. 10 (Cholula, 1756); and VEMC Leg. 67, exp. 36 (Cholula, 1757).

⁴² This seems to have been true of other regions, too. For instance, in a lengthy Nahuatl-language petition of June 26, 1662, the “householders, elders, old women, and people” of Buenaventura Tezoyuca and Santa María Asunción Quanala laid out in great detail the excessive fees charged by the Franciscans of nearby Texcoco. Moreover, if the people failed to pay the proper fees the friars “gather them there in the square and take our men’s clothes away, their shirts and hats, and they take the headdresses our women wear to Mass”; Newberry Library Ayer MS. 1481, F(6) (document out of original context). Similar complaints were raised on December 5, 1669 in a shorter Nahuatl-language petition by town officers of Santa María de Jesús Atlixco, south of Huejotzinco. Once again, Franciscans were those accused of wrongdoing; Newberry Library, Ayer MS. 1481, F(8) (document out of original context).

⁴³ BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 108, exp. 1481, #s 3 & 4 (the Audiencia vs. fray Agustín de Villa, 1709-1714); the Audiencia cited cases of arancel abuse that were decided against the friars involved dating from 1669 in the towns of Xochiapa and Octupa.

⁴⁴ BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 108, exp. 1481, #2, and exp. 1490, #1 (The Franciscans of Cuernavaca vs. its visitas and the Audiencia, 1671–72).

⁴⁵ BNM/AH Fondo Franciscano vol. 60, “Copia del arancel y directorio de San Lucas Mazatepec,” 1730s. For a comparison, see AGN HJ leg. 323, exp. 1 (petitioners from Chalcatzingo charge that friars from Jonacatepec exceed the arancel, 1733).

⁴⁶ AGN HJ vol. 76, exp. 21, fol. 4 (rioting in Tlaltizapan, 1748). Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, p. 134,Google Scholar finds that most uprisings against priests were caused by the application of innovative or illegal fees.

⁴⁷ See AGN Tierras vol. 1962, exp. 4, fol. 10 (council of Tepoztlan vs. the curate doctor don Juan José Fernández Pinta concerning arancel abuse, 1782–83. The curate justified his actions by citing the distances and difficult conditions he met during his travels from town to town). Disputes over excessive fees continued into the national period. See Powell, , “Priests and Peasants,” p. 305.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See VEMC Leg. 53, exp. 6, fol. 11 (Verdugo vs. Tepoztlan, Jan. 13-Oct. 22, 1791), VEMC Leg. 56, exp. 40, fol. 87 (Verdugo vs. Tepoztlan, Jan. 15, 1791-Dec. 20, 1794), and VEMC Leg. 3, exp. 5, fol. 23 (Verdugo vs. Tepoztlan, 1792–1796). For comparison see alleged abuse of the arancel by priests in the Metepec area, 1749–1774, in VEMC Leg. 69, exp. 1, fol. 58.

⁴⁹ Schwaller, , Origins of Church Wealth, pp. 97–98,Google Scholar 102–03. For comparison with Guatemala, Orellana, , Tzutujil Maya, p. 202,Google Scholar notes that an order of 1578 prohibited demands for unpaid labor and a ración from the indigenous people; Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 85–86,Google Scholar also discusses the ración.

⁵⁰ Schwaller, , Origins of Church Wealth, pp. 99–101,Google Scholar 107. Borah, , Justice by Insurance, pp. 163,Google Scholar 349, includes records of cases centering around this question from 1616–1801. In most of them, the authorities ruled in the indigenous people’s favor. This complaint was also made in a lengthy Nahuatl/Spanish petition dispatched by notables of Texcoco, Tlacopan, and Tlaxcala to the king in 1570, Newberry Library Ayer MS. 1481, F(36). For comparison, see a discussion of similar abuses in Guatemala in Van Oss, Adriaan C., “Rural Brotherhoods in Colonial Guatemala,” in Manipulating the Saints: Religious Brotherhoods and Social Integration in Post-conquest Latin America, Meyers, Albert and Hopkins, Diane Elizabeth, eds. (Hamburg, 1988), pp. 35–49.Google Scholar

⁵¹ AGN Indios vol. 4, exp. 489, fol. 149r (council of Guauchichinola vs. the guardián of Tlaquiltenango, 1590); AGN HJ leg. 210, exp. 29, fol.l (Juan Miguel, who refers to himself as nitriportarion (I, a tributary), don Juan de Santiago, Governor, and don Pedro de Sosa to the Gobernador del Estado, 1607, a Nahuatl petition); AGN HJ leg. 59, exp. 3 (the council of Cuernavaca vs. fray Nicolás de Origuen, 1630).

⁵² AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 79, exp. 7, fols. 13r-vta (San Juan Chontalquatlan to the curate of Teticpac, April 25, 1664), fols. 15r-vta (Acuitlapan to the curate of Teticpac, April 1664), and fols. 18r-vta (the fiscal don Juan Lázaro of Teticpac to the curate, April 1664); all are written in Nahuatl.

⁵³ AGN Bienes Nacionales Leg. 1099, exp. 5, fols. 4r-5vta. (Nahuatl complaint concerning the tlatlacolli (“sins”) of the priest Gerónimo de Frias Quijada, Izcateopan, 1614).

⁵⁴ Orellana, , Tzutujil Mayas, pp. 200–01Google Scholar (1676 order); AGN HJ leg. 402, exp. 54 (salaries of the curates of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction, 1749).

⁵⁵ VEMC Leg. 71, exp. 23 (Ecclesiastical expenses of Cuernavaca and nine barrios and sujetos, c. 1720s). Taylor, William B. and Chance, John K., “Cofradías and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy,” American Ethnologist, 12:1 (1985), 1–26,Google Scholar comment on the difficulties the lay brotherhoods and community governments had in providing enough support for festivals.

⁵⁶ Tutino, John, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton, 1986), pp. 189–91Google Scholar; and Martin, Cheryl, Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque, 1985), pp. 71–120.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See, for example, AGN HJ leg. 312, exp. 38, fol. 3 (Xalostoc vs. the monastery of Cuernavaca, concerning demands for more than the legal maize stipends, 1682); AGN Civil vol. 1118, exp. 5, fols. 73r-90v (petitioner doña Josepha María accuses a local curate of charging excessive fees for the installation of a clock in a tower of Tepoztlan’s monastery, 1713). García, Cayetano Reyes, et al., Documentos mexicanos: Cacchiqueles, Mayas, Matlatzincas, Mixtecos y Nahuas, vols. 1 y 2 (México, 1982)Google Scholar gives many citations of such cases. Similar activities in Guatemala are discussed by Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 85–87.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ AGN Tierras vol. 1549, exp. 4, fol. 17 (the council of Xantetelco vs. fray Antonio de Arellano, 1725–27).

⁵⁹ AGN HJ leg. 323, exp. 1, fol. Ir (the council of Amayuca vs. fray Antonio de Arellano, 1733).

⁶⁰ AGN HJ leg. 59, exp. 3 (council of Cuernavaca to the Marquesado concerning the profiteering of fray Nicolás de Origuen, 1630, a Nahuatl petition).

⁶¹ For the Cuernavaca area in the later colonial era see AGN HJ leg. 323, which has numerous references to such litigation; AGN HJ leg. 208, exp. 33, fol. Ir (council of Chalcatzingo vs. the Jesuit Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo and their ingenio (sugar estate) of Chiconoselo, 1732); AGN HJ vol. 52, exp. 20, fol. 11 (councils of Tlaltenango, Tetela, and Santa María vs. the Jesuit monastery of San Gerónimo, Mexico City, and its rancho of Popotla, 1736); AGN HJ vol. 78, exp. 4 (council of Ticuman vs. the Jesuit hacienda of Xochimancas, 1741); AGN HJ vol. 76, exp. 24, fol. 53 (council of Oaxtepec vs. fray Antonio de Arratia and the Dominican monastery of the same town over the composición of land claimed by both parties in the dispute, 1745–46 with earlier references to the land in question dating from 1614, 1632, and 1699. The indigenous litigants were told by the friars that they would be damned if they continued the dispute!); AGN Tierras vol. 1962, exp. 3, fol. 4 (Oaxtepec vs. the friars of San Hipólito, concerning the return of some lots, 1777–1794); and AGN Tierras vol. 1668, exp. 6, fol. 46 (Ayahualco vs. the curate Antonio Sánchez de Torres, concerning land possession, 1783–1785). For comparison with another area see Newberry Library Ayer MS 1481, F(2) (Nahuatl petition from San Francisco Totocamihuacan; out of context, location not clear). The petitioners, apparently writing sometime in the seventeenth century, claimed that an unnamed friar “wanted to evict us from our land at Quetlachapan.... Now he wants to evict us, and has already usurped it.”

⁶² AGN HJ leg. 266, exp. 6, fols. 41r-41v (councils of the towns of the Tlaquiltenango area to the Marquesado, 1619; it should be noted that when this Nahuatl petition was translated, the section describing the friar’s forgery was omitted, weakening the indigenous case).

⁶³ AGN Inquisición vol. 4, exp. 3 (Diego Díaz del Castillo on the activities of the priest Gaspar de Tejeda, 1568–71). Díaz clearly disliked this priest, whom he called a liar who had already been expelled from the bishoprics of Tlaxcala and Oaxaca.

⁶⁴ AGN Civil vol. 2182, exp. 13, fol. 10 (Manuel Gregorio, Juan Andrés, Juan de los Santos, Francisco Paulino, and the council of the sujeto of San Miguel vs. the parish priests and governor of Tepoztlan, 1765).

⁶⁵ AGN Civil vol. 2229, exp. 61 (Ayoxochiapa, Tetelilla, and Tlaliztac vs. the Augustinians of Jonacatepec, 1745–47).

⁶⁶ AGN Civil vol. 1513, exp. 13, fol. 40 (Ayoxochiapa, Tetelilla, and Tlaliztac vs. the curates of Jonacatepec, 1789-95). For a similar, though not as detailed case, see charges that the priest José Tiburcio Verdugo of Tepoztlan was assessing spurious fees and fines, such as 15 pesos and a yoke of oxen levied on the town’s governor for failing to bring a meal to the curate at the proper time during a festival; VEMC Leg. 53, exp. 6, fol. 11; and VEMC leg. 56, exp. 40, fol. 87 (1791–1794). For comparison with other areas see Nutini, , Todos Santos, p. 107,Google Scholar who finds that “unconstrained by vows of poverty, the priests were not above engaging in economic exploitation of the Indian population.” Oss, Van, “Rural Brotherhoods,” p. 43,Google Scholar discusses essentially the same situation in colonial Guatemala.

⁶⁷ A discussion of Bourbon efforts to take greater control of such things as the local electoral process and the use of local community funds, often supported or even directed by members of the local clergy, and can be found in Haskett, , Indigenous Rulers, pp. 52–59,Google Scholar 62–82.

⁶⁸ See, for example, Nutini, Hugo G., Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic Expressive and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead (Princeton, 1988),CrossRefGoogle Scholar who finds the regular clergy much more sympathetic to the indigenous people than the seculars, whom he characterizes as “on the whole a prejudiced, unempathetic, self-righteous, and intellectually unimaginative lot” (p. 108). For a comparison, see Poole, Stafford CM, “The Declining Image of the Indian among Churchmen in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” in Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Spanish America, Ramírez, Susan E., ed. (Syracuse, 1989), pp. 11–19.Google Scholar Poole finds that there was “no uniformity in the attitudes of churchmen” (p. 12).

⁶⁹ Lockhart, , The Nahuas, p. 208.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ William B. Taylor believes that the secular clergy serving in the late colonial Cuernavaca region were “unusually temperamental and dissolute,” another factor contributing to worsening priest-parishioner relations in the area (unpublished manuscript, author’s files).

⁷¹ Greenleaf, , The Mexican Inquisition, p. 128.Google Scholar Greenleaf believes that Montúfar, a Dominican, wanted to assert control over the regular orders by means of his inquisition, and so especially targeted members of the order clergy. In the process, numerous libidinous friars were discovered. Unfortunately, Greenleaf provides no details of these cases.

⁷² See, for example, descriptions in Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México: La Inquisición de México, García, Genaro, ed. (México: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1974).Google Scholar In or around 1646, two members of the clergy appeared in an auto de fe accused of marrying Spanish women under false pretenses (p. 148): Antonio Vallejo, alias fray Antonio de Santa María, 45, and originally from Sevilla, “married” a widowed Spanish woman of Manila by the name of Catalina de Marmolejo, after claiming he was a bachelor; Luis Pérez de Vargas, who was from Granada in Spain, “married” a single Spanish woman of San Salvador el Verde, in the bishopric of Tlaxcala, named Isabel Rodríguez de Carcamo.

⁷³ Documentos inéditos, pp. 213–14, includes the case of fray Joseph, who was accused of passing himself off as a physician in Yautepec and marrying a woman with whom he had already fathered a child. Later, he allegedly moved on to Puebla, where he married a second time to an “honorable [Spanish] maiden” sometime before 1648. Fray Antonio, a “religioso descalzo de la provincia de San Diego,” came before the Inquisition in 1790 because he was supposedly guilty of solicitation in Cuautla Amilpas; AGN Inquisición vol. 1, pte. A, exp. 25, fols. 41–58.

⁷⁴ AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 1086, exp. 12 (friars of the monastery of San Bernardino de Taxco are accused of sexual crimes, 1804); AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 1110, exp. 1 (don Manuel de Sobremonte and Pedro Sánchez de Hervas, curates of Taxco, are accused of having mistresses, 1807).

⁷⁵ For examples from various parts of central New Spain see the translation of a Nahuatl petition from Jalostotitlan, 1611, which complains that a cleric was keeping a mistress and had attempted to rape a female parishioner, Anderson, , Berdan, , and Lockhart, , Beyond the Codices, p. 167 Google Scholar; Lockhart has translated two similar petitions from other locations charging that clerics solicited sexual favors in the confessional, “Nahuatl Documents in Translation,” (author’s files); VEMC Leg. 69, exp. 8, fol. 12 (the priest Mariano Ysidro de Casas, of San Juan Ozolotepec, has been confined to a Carmelite convent in Oaxaca following charges that he raped a young indigenous woman, February 1795); and VEMC Leg. 42, exp. 31 (priest of Taqualpam charged with having sexual relations and fathering children with “numerous” indigenous women, 1809). The lack of celibacy among the rural clergy continued to be a problem in the nineteenth century. See Powell, , “Priests and Peasants,” p. 301.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Among those who do are historians Stephanie Wood and Ramón Gutiérrez. Wood, , “Rape as a Tool of Conquest in Early Latin America,” CSWS Review: Annual Magazine of the Center for the Study of Women and Society, University of Oregon (1992), 18–20,Google Scholar identifies a great reluctance among Spaniards of the time and modern (mostly male) historians to seek the indigenous perspective on the rape of women, let alone consider that rape might have been an important, if not always conscious, tool of political conquest and subjugation. Gutiérrez, in his prize-winning book When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, 1991), investigates conflicting attitudes towards sexuality among the Pueblo peoples, the Spanish laity, and Franciscan missionaries, including the socio-political dimensions of this conflict.

⁷⁷ Burkhart, , Slippery Earth, pp. 152–53.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 443, exp. 1, fol. 293 (indigenous women of Ohuapan, Iguala, to the authorities concerning the abuses of the curate Francisco Gudino, 1611, a Nahuatl petition); AGN HJ leg. 59, exp. 3 (Nahuatl petitions from the council of Cuernavaca and eight women of the sujeto of Chapultepec to the Marquesado authorities concerning fray Nicolás de Origuen, 1630—in the petition, the women added that their daughters were likely to be assaulted on the road to Cuernavaca by African slaves from the sugar estate of Amanalco, as well, but this may have been an excuse to keep the girls away from friar Origuen); and BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 112, exp. 1530, no. 3 (past officers of San Francisco Texalpa to the ecclesiastical authorities concerning the sexual behavior of fray Juan Pérez Conde of Xiutepec). See also AGN Criminal vol. 204, exp. 12, fols. 384–392 (the priest Bachiller don José Manuel de Sotomayor is accused of keeping a mistress by petitioners from Jonacatepec, 1818).

⁷⁹ AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 1099, exp. 5, fols. 4r-5vta (the indigenous council of Izcateopan vs. the Bachiller Gerónimo de Frias Quijada, 1614, a Nahuatl petition).

⁸⁰ AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 1099, exp. 5, fols l0r-vta (noble petitioners of Tzincapopalco, Izcateopan parish, June 18, 1614); and fol. 11r (noble petitioners of Izcateopan, June 17, 1614, the source of the quote).

⁸¹ Sahagún, , Florentine Codex, Book 3, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁸² Burkhart, , Slippery Earth, pp. 97–98,Google Scholar 109.

⁸³ Sahagún, , Florentine Codex, Book 3, p. 66.Google Scholar See also Durán, Fray Diego, Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, Horcasitas, Fernando and Heyden, Doris, trans, and ed. (Norman, 1971), pp. 96,Google Scholar 283.

⁸⁴ Anderson, , Berdan, , and Lockhart, , Beyond the Codices, p. 167 Google Scholar; Borah, , Justice by Insurance, pp. 162–71Google Scholar; Clendinnen, , “Disciplining the Indians,” pp. 30–34 Google Scholar; de Alva, Klor, “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation,” p. 357 Google Scholar; Lovell, W. George, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatan Highlands, 1500–1821 (Montreal, 1985), pp. 111–13Google Scholar; Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, pp. 127–28Google Scholar; and Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 29–30,Google Scholar 85. For documentary comparison with another region, see also VEMC Leg. 33, Exp. 5, fol. 61 (curate of Santa Clara Ocoyucan, Cholula, the Bachiller don Agustín de Moure y Canseco, is accused of treating his parishioners “without the love and charity proper to his ministry,” 1798).

⁸⁵ A royal decree of January 27, 1536 had stated that the indigenous people were to be taught “the things of our Holy Catholic Faith, and that they not be mistreated,” Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, p. 29.Google Scholar A royal decree of 1560 had ordered the Audiencia of New Spain to bar clergy from whipping or imprisoning their indigenous parishioners, or of maintaining jails in churches or monasteries; Documentos inéditos, p. 459. In 1565 another royal order stated that the clergy “could not have their own jails or stocks in monasteries for the punishment of the Indians and that they could not cut the Indians’ hair as punishment,” Orellana, , Tzutujil Mayas, p. 203.Google Scholar Poole, , Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 81–82,Google Scholar states that in course of power struggle between Moya and the regular orders, the former accused the latter of mistreating the indigenous people.

⁸⁶ All of these abuses were charged in Nahuatl and Spanish-language petitions to fray Nicolás de Origuen of Cuernavaca’s Franciscan monastery in 1630, AGN HJ leg. 59, exp. 3. For a representative eighteenth-century case see AGN Tierras vol. 1549, exp. 4, fol. 17 (officers of Xantetelco vs. a curate from Jonacatepec, 1725–27).

⁸⁷ AGN HJ leg. 210, exp. 26, fol. Ir (Catarina Xocoyotl of Texalpa to the Gobernador del Estado, c. 1607, a Nahuatl petition). For a representative eighteenth-century case of such individual abuse see AGN Indios vol. 50, exp. 6, fols. 11r-12v (Juan Domingo and spouse Nicolasa María vs. fray Miguel de Cervantes, Tepoztlan, 1724).

⁸⁸ AGN Bienes Nacionales Leg. 1099, exp. 5, fols. 4r-5vta (Nahuatl petition listing the sins of the priest Gerónimo de Frías Quijada, Izcateopan, 1614).

⁸⁹ AGN HJ leg. 344, exp. 40, fol. 13 and AGN HJ leg. 208, exp. 205, fol. 1r-1v (council of Amayuca vs. fray Felipe Abarca, Augustinian of Xantetelco, 1732).

⁹⁰ VEMC Leg. 53, exp. 6, fol. 11; and VEMC Leg. 56, exp. 40, fol. 87 (Tepoztlan vs. José Tiburcio Verdugo, 1791–1794). For a comparison with another area, see VEMC Leg. 69, exp. 1, fol. 58, in which a priest of San Gaspar Atengo, Metepec jurisdiction, is accused (among other things) of keeping a jail, 1749. As in Verdugo’s case, the guilty friars were reprimanded by various ecclesiastical and civil authorities.

⁹¹ AGN Criminal vol. 204, exp. 13, fols. 384r-392r (council of Jonacatepec vs. Bachiller don José Manuel de Sotomayor, 1818). For other cases of clergy-indigenous friction overtly connected with charges of physical abuse but apparently underlain by political factors see AGN HJ leg. 59, exp. 3 (Cuernavaca, 1630—part of the conflict between the friar Nicolás de Origuen and the Cuernavacan town council of 1630 may have been based on fears of election manipulation, since a factional election dispute broke out in the same year); BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 112, exp. 1530, #3 (factions in Texalpa’s ruling group disagree over the question of fray Juan Pérez Conde’s (Franciscan of Xiuhtepec) disregard of the arancel, 1737); AGN Civil vol. 2182, exp. 11, fol. 5 (factions in Xochitlan’s ruling group contradict each other over the question of unpaid labor being demanded by a secular priest of Yecapixtla, 1788).

⁹² Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, p. 136,Google Scholar suggests that flogging would have been especially disturbing to indigenous people, since by law Spaniards could not be whipped, and on p. 141 states that many types of clerical abuses were “symbolic affronts” causing townspeople to rise up “in defense of their liberty or their way of life.”

⁹³ See Schwaller, , Origins of Church Wealth, pp. 84–85 Google Scholar; and idem, Church and Clergy, p. 131.

⁹⁴ Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion, p. 141.Google Scholar Taylor believes that by the late colonial period a large number of clergy had lost the “sense of utopian mission and personal sacrifice that had animated the ‘spiritual conquest’” of the sixteenth century. See also Young, Eric Van, “Conclusions,” in Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Spanish America, Ramírez, Susan E., ed. (Syracuse, 1989), pp. 87–102,Google Scholar who remarks on the “boredom” of life for clergy in isolated indigenous parishes. Powell, , “Priests and Peasants,” p. 302,Google Scholar finds that secular clergy in the nineteenth-century Mexican countryside continued to face a “life of unrelieved boredom” and “cultural deprivation.”

⁹⁵ Such struggles probably lay behind the request of two Oaxaca-based priests, Juan García Corona, of San Ildefonso de Villa Alta, and Francisco Angel Jiménez de los Cobos of Santo Tomás Iztlan, to be transferred from their parishes. Both cite the animosity of their Zapotee parishioners as the main reason for their petitions; VEMC Leg. 32, exp. 16, fol. 22 (October 11, 1728 – March 24, 1729).

⁹⁶ Documentos inéditos, pp. 411–12 (order from the crown that the Audiencia investigate those instances in which clergy could punish indigenous backsliders, in response from pleas from Mexican clergy, 1538). See also Clendinnen, , “Disciplining the Indians,” pp. 29–30.Google Scholar de Alva, Klor, “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodations,” p. 357,Google Scholar notes the survival of this attitude into the late eighteenth century.

⁹⁷ Christian, William A. Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981), pp. 159–67.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Lic. Dr.de Palacio, don Diego García, Letter to the King of Spain, Squier, Ephraim G., trans., Comparato, Frank E., ed. (Culver City, 1985), p. 28 Google Scholar; Clendinnen, , “Disciplining the Indians,” p. 42.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ A priest of San Juan Atliztaca, in the Tlapa jurisdiction of Puebla, don Antonio Tenorio de la Banda, believed that the whippings he administered to his parishioners were mild, and showed both his concern for their spiritual welfare and his great love for them. See VEMC Leg. 68, exp. 9, fols. 27r-29vta (January 14, 1796). Clendinnen, , “Disciplining the Indians”, pp. 41–46,Google Scholar provides a succinct discussion of this belief.

¹⁰⁰ For instance, the first Mexican Provincial Council of 1555 barred indigenous people from the priesthood and from handling sacred objects because they were believed to be weak, unreliable, and of inferior intelligence; the third Provincial Council (1585) referred to indigenous people as “rudes,” according to historian Stafford Poole “a Latin theological term indicating persons incapable for some reason of learning more than the rudiments of religion, on a par with the lowest level of European peasantry;” Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras, who basically had a favorable attitude towards the religious instruction of the indigenous people, nontheless saw them as child-like, lazy, and of “limited understanding” (all from Poole, , Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 128–29Google Scholar, 153, 155); and the noted scholar of pre-contact Mexicà society and religion, fray Diego de Durán, felt that the indigenous people were poor of spirit, possessed of an “inborn wretchedness,” and full of “sly tricks” used “to make a mockery of the Faith” [fray Durán, Diego, Book of Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, Horcasitas, Fernando and Heyden, Doris, trans, and eds. (Norman, 1971), pp. 53–55.Google Scholar] That these attitudes were shared by the parish clergy is clear from the case of the late eighteenth-century priest Tenorio de la Banda, who had an extremely low opinion of the majority of the people of Atliztaca. Charged with a variety of abuses by some of them, the priest characterized his accusers as ignorant drunkards and thieves who did not conduct themselves as Christians. See VEMC Leg. 68, exp. 9, fol. 27r (Jan. 14, 1796); the subdelegado (district officer) of Tlapa investigating the case agreed with the priest, concluding that the problem grew from the indolence of the indigenous people. Burkhart, , Slippery Earth, pp. 158–59,Google Scholar remarks on Spanish attitudes about the indigenous capacity for celibacy. See also Poole, Stafford, CM, “The Declining Image of the Indian among Churchmen in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” in Inidan-Religious Retenons in Colonial Spanish America, Ramirez, Susan, ed. (Syracuse, 1989), pp. 13–16,Google Scholar who believes that survivals of paganism, as well as a resurgence of the ideas of Augustine of Hippo, who held human nature in low regard, were behind these opinions.

¹⁰¹ de Alva, Klor, “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation,” pp. 358–59,Google Scholar believes that many memebers of the clergy doubted the sincerity of indigenous conviction and religiosity.

¹⁰² This was the case of the visionary Antonio Pérez, discussed at length by Gruzinski, Serge, Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands: Indian Power and Colonial Society, 1520–1880 (Stanford, 1989), pp. 105–72.Google Scholar Greenleaf, Richard E., Inquisición y sociedad en el México colonial (Madrid, 1985), pp. 184–87,Google Scholar cites a number of cases of alleged indigenous idolatry that made it before the Holy Tribunal, several of which originated in the Cuernavaca and Taxco regions: AGN Inquisición vol. 37, exp. 11 (caciques of Oaxtepec accused of human sacrifice, 1546); vol. 40, exp. 7 (don Juan, cacique of Iguala, accused of idolatry and of concubinage, 1540); vol. 1073, exp. 2 (various indigenous men and women accused of idolatry, 1761); and AGN Bienes Nacionales leg. 596, exp. 29 (indigenous people of Iguala accused of witchcraft, 1681). In the late sixteenth century, the Bishop of Chiapas, Pedro de Feria, believed that most of the Maya were barely Christians; Poole, , Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 135–36.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ See, for example, VEMC Leg. 47, exp. 17 (the bachiller don Joseph Mariano Hurtado de Mendoza, curate of San Miguel Chipetlan, Puebla, claims that his parishioners are violent-tempered drunkards who are prone to idolatry, 1777—these same parishioners had accused their curate of unspecified crimes); VEMC Leg. 28, exp. 2, fol. 60 (secular priest Juan Nepomuceno Cisneros of Malacatapec notes that his parishioners resist attending mass, 1794); VEMC Leg. 8, exp. 25, fol. Ir (the bachiller don Juan Evangelista Belaunzarán charges that his parishioners of San Pedro de la Cañada, Queretaro, are “superstitious brigands and theives,” 1795); MacLeod, Murdo J., “Dominican Explanations for Revolts and their Suppression in Colonial Chiapas, 1545–1715,” in Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Spanish America, Ramírez, Susan E., ed. (Syracuse, 1989), p. 45 Google Scholar—MacLeod reports that “friars, like the other dominant sectors … justified their impositions, their use of force, and their obligatory systems of work by reiteration of the colonial myth of the sloth and perversity of the natives;” and Oss, Van, “Rural Brotherhoods,” pp. 36–40,Google Scholar who believes that friars and priests in Guatemala considered the Maya to be “most miserable in body and soul.” See also Carmichael, James H., “Recurrent Idolatry and Religious Syncretism,” in The Roman Catholic Church in Colonial Latin America, Greenleaf, Richard E., ed. (New York, 1971), pp. 140–41,Google Scholar who concludes that the clergy in Oaxaca were suspicious of the sincerity of indigenous people who professed to be Christians; and Young, Van, “Conclusions,” p. 89,Google Scholar who finds that later colonial clergy continued to find the indigenous people “ignorant, lazy, drunken, vicious sodomites, naturally prone to barbarism, violence, rebelling, and backsliding.”

¹⁰⁴ AGN Tierras vol. 2353, exp. 6, fols. 1r-3r (fray Pedro de Arana, Franciscan of Cuernavaca, defends the actions of his fiscal, 1731).

¹⁰⁵ AGN HJ Leg. 115, exp. 3, fols. 16vta-18r (an unnamed friar of Mazatepec, Cuernavaca region, on the character of litigants of San Gaspar Coatlan, July 1720); BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 69, exp. 1232, #29, fol. 2 (guardián and ministro coadjutor of the Dominican monastery of Xochitepec to the Vicar General, 1753—the friar singled out the town of Texalpa for special criticism, but otherwise generalized for all of Spanish America and the Philippines); AGN HJ Leg. 309, exp. 6, fol. 50 (reports of the curates of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction on the state of their parishes, 1781); AGN Civil vol. 2229, exp. 61 (fray Pedro de Arellano, along with fray Matias de Garduñato, both of Jonacatepec, on the character of the indigenous people, 1745).

¹⁰⁶ AGN Bienas Nacionales Leg. 1112, exp. 45, fol. 5.

¹⁰⁷ BNM/FR Fondo de Origen MS 1062, Libro del Convenio de Cuauhnanuac [Cuernavaca] (1736). The author of the directory states that the only trustworthy sacristan, a man named Fabián who was not a “drunkard,” had been named sacristán mayor (chief sacristan). For the same kind of information see BNM/FR Manuscritos Cedularios, MS 999, Directorio del Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Cuauhnahuac, 1733–1735; and for a similar situation in the Cholula area in 1797, see VEMC Leg. 33, exp. 5, fols. 29r-31vta, in which a curate of Santa Clara Ocoyucan charged with various abuses counters that the indigenous people have caused a great deal of damage to church property.

¹⁰⁸ For excellent treatments of this subject, see Burkhart, Slippery Earth,; de Alva, Klor, “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation,” p. 353.Google Scholar Both believe the indigenous people of central New Spain were not thoroughly converted but instead “adopted Christianity only outwardly.” In contrast, see Spores, , Mixtee, pp. 144–45,Google Scholar who despite identifying a “superficiality of religious conviction” among the colonial Mixtees, concludes that because the natives “flocked to the churches” their conversion was “eminently successful.”

¹⁰⁹ BNM/FR Fondo Franciscano Caja 112, exp. 1530, #11 (fray Antonio de Arpide of Xiuhtepec to the Vicar General of the Franciscans, 1753). Oss, Van, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 18 Google Scholar and 147, reports that clergy operating in Guatemala blamed their troubles with indigenous parishioners on their “rusticity” and because they were “vice ridden.”

¹¹⁰ For an excellent discussion of títulos primordiales and their visions of conquest and religious conversion, see Wood, Stephanie, “The Cosmic Conquest: Late-Colonial Views of the Sword and Cross in Central Mexican Títulos,” Ethnohistory, 38:2 (Spring 1991), 176–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Lockhart, James, “Views of Self and History in Some Valley of Mexico Towns: Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History, Collier, George A., Rosaldo, Renato I., and Wirth, John D., eds. (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ The Municipal Codex is one of sixteen known primordial titles from Cuernavaca and its hinterland. For a long time, it was only known by means of nineteenth-century transcriptions of a partial Nahuatl text and a full Spanish translation held in the Biblioteque Nacionale of Paris. Thanks to information from historian John Frederick Schwaller, I was able to locate the originals of the Codex, including two copies of the full Nahuatl text, in the Clements Library of the University of Michigan among a collection known as the “Cuernavaca Papers,” which included the texts of nine other primordial titles; the staff of the library generously allowed the texts to be microfilmed. The titles of Cuernavaca are discussed in detail in Haskett, Robert, “Visions of Municipal Glory Undimmed: The Nahuatl Town Histories of Colonial Cuernavaca,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review, 1:1 (Sept. 1992).Google Scholar

¹¹² Unless otherwise noted, all quotes come from the first several folios of the Municipal Codex, Clements Library Cuernavaca Papers, fols. 121r-125v.

¹¹³ Prescott, William H., The Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1967), p. 530,Google Scholar mentions the “Cross of the Marqués.”

¹¹⁴ de Alva, Klor, “Religious Rationalization,” p. 240,Google Scholar see this as a third and continuing stage in the religious culture of the post-conquest Nahua.

¹¹⁵ See Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 229–35.Google Scholar Using a number of sources, including primordial titles and a ledger kept by a family of Tepemaxalco, Toluca Valley, Lockhart discusses a tendency for groups and even individuals to develop a proprietary view of the local church and its cults which muted, or even actively overlooked, Spanish Catholic direction.