Pipes, pigments, and posas: Tapping into the divine in early colonial Mexican architecture
摘要
This article examines the techniques Indigenous Nahuas used to harness water’s agential forces at a colonial Mexican mission site. It focuses on the four stational chapels (capillas posas) located in the churchyard of the sixteenth-century Franciscan monastic complex of San Miguel at Huejotzingo, a small town in the present-day Puebla state. The posa chapels are among the most well-known monuments from Mexico’s early colonial period, and the role of posas as sites for Catholic evangelization and processional rituals is well established. Yet posas were at this time also integral to the distribution of drinking water to the town’s Nahua and Spanish inhabitants. In this article, I use an integrated approach to reveal the interconnected hydraulic, pictorial, and religious histories of the posas of San Miguel. I draw on archaeological evidence and painted Nahuatl documents to reconstruct the hydraulic features and chromatic symbolism of the posas for the Nahuas. Based on an examination of the monastic waterworks and the fragmentary frescoes that decorate the chapels, I argue that Nahuas used the San Miguel posas to tap into the divine and renew connections between humans and beyond-human forces frayed by colonial settlement. Analyzing the posas from the vantage of their subterranean pipes, spill fountains, and vibrant blue pigments surfaces Nahua histories, experiences, and connections to these canonical colonial monuments, revealing how Nahua people forged attachments to Catholic architecture on their own terms.