Indigenous Sacrifice in the Christian Language Among the Communities of the Northern Mixteca of Oaxaca, Mexico

Traditions of human sacrifice among the peoples of the Northern Mixteca survived the Spanish Conquest. The Postclassic period’s emphasis on warrior patron deities and militarism found new venues for expression and identity within the rich repertoire of Christian imagery with its martyrdom of saints. Christianity succeeded because the individuals who introduced it manifested spiritual and material superiority and power indicative of their god’s omnipotence. By presenting the challenges and suffering encountered in daily living as necessary for achieving salvation, indigenous ideas of an afterlife were augmented because the Spanish negotiated with their god and the saints as avatars. The natives were overwhelmed by Spanish technology: wooden houses that floated on water (ships), huge animals that carried and obeyed the commands of their masters, animals that could be raised for food, impervious metal skin and terrible weapons that spat fire. Although the new god shared some roles that were familiar to the Indians, his greatness was made manifest in the greater powers exhibited by the faithful who served him.The ideas related to human sacrifice were readily understood because the Indian gods, like Christ, also died and were resurrected. Invoking Christ’s Passion and death during Mass aligned with indigenous beliefs in divine intervention and hence, were linked to propitiatory rituals aimed at alleviating life’s hardships resulting from recurrent drought, food scarcity, excessive tribute and labor demands, disease, and death. Through their calendarized feast days, Christ and the saints supplanted the ancient gods as guarantors of sustenance. As in pre-Hispanic times, the nobility continued to oversee the ritual life of their subjects. To maintain their highly visible roles and social position as leaders in their community, the elite first had to divulge aspects of the ancestral beliefs to the Spanish. They also needed to merge aspects of ritual life, in the context of the new religion, to perpetuate their ascendancy. The introduction of livestock transformed traditional agriculturalists into pastoralists aligning them more closely with Biblical lifeways and the ideology of Christian sacrifice. While sheep and goats were a valuable source of food in this drought prone area and a convenient substitute for human beings as offerings, they satisfied the central themes related to subsistence and obligatory reciprocity. The elites who controlled the mercantile economy and much of the livestock continued to patronize artisans to produce ornaments for the churches and provide materials required by the liturgy. To this day, they organize and subsidize expenses for feasts honoring the patron saints, encouraging participation in holy festivities to promote social cohesion.