TOTONAC RELIGION

TOTONAC RELIGION . In the city of Zempoala (Cempoallan), situated in what is today the state of Veracruz, Mexico, the Totonac people were the first to receive Europeans to the great land mass of continental America. The year was 1519 and the Spanish conquest of Mexico had begun. At that time the Totonac occupied a strip of land flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Sierra Madre Oriental, between the Cazones River in the north and La Antigua River near the present port of Veracruz. Two important Totonac ceremonial centers existed in this territory. The first, El Tajín, was located in the north and had ceased to function before the arrival of the Spanish. The second, Zempoala, is reputed to have been populous when the Spanish arrived; soon after, it witnessed the collapse of its idols and their replacement with the Christian cross.

Well before the Conquest, the Totonac people had extended even farther south, to the margins of the Papaloapan River. The Nahuatl-speaking Aztec had, however, reduced the extent of the Totonac's southern territories, and at the time of the Spanish arrival Zempoala, the Totonac capital, was paying tribute to its Aztec rulers. By this time Nahuatl was the lingua franca in the region, and thus the Spanish priests used Nahuatl terms to describe Totonac religion, a practice still common among scholars today.

At present some one hundred thousand Totonac-speaking people survive in the northern part of their original territory between the states of Puebla and Veracruz. Linguistically, the Totonac are related to the Zoqueano- and Mayan-speaking peoples. However, there is no evidence connecting the religion and culture of the Totonac to those of the Maya and the Zoqueano. Our understanding of the Totonac religion is based upon archaeological evidence primarily from Zempoala, El Tajín, and Puebla, and upon analysis of early descriptions provided by Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas and Fray Andrés de Olmos.

Evidence from Zempoala

According to Las Casas, who relied on information supplied by a young page of Cortés, daily homage was paid in Zempoala to the Sun (Chichiní in Totonac), who was the creator of all other gods. Early in the morning seven priests would attend the temple. One of the priests would gaze skyward, paying reverence to the Sun before bathing the Sun's image, as well as the images of other gods, in incense. On ceremonial occasions nobles and officials would go to the temple to worship. According to Las Casas, every Saturday everyone was obliged to gather in the atrium of the temple to pray. Scholars now believe that this took place every fifth day. There, the nobles and principal dignitaries mutilated themselves before their gods by passing numerous straws through incisions made in various parts of their bodies. Las Casas mentions in particular tongues, thighs, and ears. The act of bleeding was a mechanism of purification.

At the winter solstice an important festival was celebrated during which eighteen people, men and women, were sacrificed. Eighteen is also the number of veintenas (Span., "set of twenty," i.e., "months" composed of twenty days each) into which the Mesoamerican year was divided. The human sacrifice took place at midnight; the hearts of the victims were ground into the mouths of the principal idols. Blood was the food of the Sun. The persons sacrificed were messengers sent to plead with the Sun to send his son to liberate the Totonac from the practices imposed on them by the Aztec. (Fine illustrations of human sacrifice are to be found in the reliefs at El Tajín.) Similar practices were followed at Zempoala for at least two other important festivals. The flesh of the victims was eaten by dignitaries and a few other influential people. Besides this elitist communion, there existed a practice popular among men who were more than twenty-six years of age: every six months they consumed a paste prepared from the blood of infants' hearts, seeds from plants grown in the temples, and a milky latex from the Castilla elastica tree. This sacrament was called yoliaimtlaqualoz, a Nahuatl word meaning "food for the soul."

Another regular custom was a confession of sins, called maiolcuita in Nahuatl. A person would retire to some isolated spot and confess his wrongdoings aloud. According to Las Casas, penitents would often wring their hands and cry out in anguish with such conviction that it was, in his words, a custom "well worth consideration."

The Totonac had a goddess, the consort of the sun god, whose temple was high in the sierra. She received sacrifices of decapitated animals and birds as well as offerings of herbs and flowers. Her name was Tonacayohua, which means "preserver of the flesh" in Nahuatl. In contrast to many other Mesoamerican cultures, the Totonac did not believe the Sun's consort to be the Moon, since Totonac tradition considered both the Sun and the Moon to be male deities. The Totonac's hope, reported by Las Casas, that the sun god would intercede by sending his son to liberate them from servitude to the Aztec's gods, who required human sacrifice, may well have been a Christian interpretation of Totonac belief. Similarly, although the Sun, the Moon, and the planet Venus together figure prominently in the paintings in the temple of Las Caritas in Zempoala, it is improbable that the Totonac viewed these three celestial deities as forming a unified Trinity.

In the same city a temple was dedicated to Xolotl, the twin brother of Quetzalcoatl. These brothers were personifications of the different manifestations of the planet Venus as Morning Star and Evening Star.

To the south of Zempoala, large sculptures were erected of women who had died during their first childbirth. Such women were venerated, their deaths being seen as equivalent to the deaths of soldiers killed while taking prisoners (new servants for the Sun). Called cihuateteo (Nah., "deified women") by the Aztec, they were responsible for transporting the Sun on his course across the sky. Statuettes from the same area provide evidence that human beings were flayed in homage to a god similar to the Aztec deity Xipe Totec; the sacrifice was made to ensure a bountiful harvest.

Evidence from El TajÍn and Puebla

The relief sculptures among the archaeological remains of El Tajín reveal the existence of another god, Huracán (whence the English word hurricane ). While in Zempoala Huracán is represented as a chacmool, a reclining anthropomorphic figure, in El Tajín he is represented as a one-legged deity whom I consider analogous to Tezcatlipoca. From the Sierra Madre near El Tajín, Olmos reported the existence of (and denounced) a god called Chicueyozumatli ("8 Monkey"), to whom homage was paid at a time near that of the Christian festival of Easter. Like Huracán, Chicueyozumatli is analogous to Tezcatlipoca. Huracán was also equivalent to the god Tajín himself; this storm god survives today among the Totonac, who give him various names, including Trueno Viejo (Span., "old thunder"), Aktsini', and Nanahuatzin.

It was also from the Sierra Madre that the Spanish first reported a festival, called Calcusot by the Totonac, which was held in November for the remembrance of the dead. This festival was widespread among the indigenous peoples of Mexico and survives today in a modified form celebrated on All Souls' Day.

Religious beliefs bore upon sexual practices. Totonac priests were required to maintain celibacy. The high priest and the secondary priest were responsible for the circumcisions of month-old boys, and they also broke the hymens of infant girls. Priests would recommend that mothers repeat the latter operation once their daughters had reached the age of six. Through Olmos we also know that those seeking good health for some relative would refrain from sexual contact for eighty days before making their petition. The general regard for abstinence is demonstrated in a popular tale in which an old man arrives too late for a competition as a result of his libertine ways. The winner of the competition is transformed into the Sun; the old man is transformed into the Moon.

Several popular tales today constitute the remnants of the Totonac religion. In the area of Zempoala the Totonac language is no longer spoken, but in the area of El Tajín (present-day Papantla de Olarte) it still survives. Here the Totonac religious tales have become syncretized with Roman Catholic beliefs. One example is that the Sun and Jesus Christ are often considered to be the same. Another example is that Saint John and the god Tajín (or Trueno Viejo) are also identified as the same. The spread of Catholic (and, more recently, Protestant) religion continues to break down the original Totonac religion.

See Also

Tezcatlipoca.

Bibliography

Las Casas, Bartolomé de. Apologética historia de las Indias. Madrid, 1909.

Olmos, Andrés de. "Proceso seguido por Fray Andrés de Olmos en contra del cacique de Matlatlán." Archivo general de la nación (Mexico City) 3 (1912): 205–215.

Torquemada, Juan de. Monarquía indiana. 3d ed. Mexico City, 1975.

Williams-García, Roberto. "Trueno Viejo = Huracán = Chac Mool." Tlatoani (Mexico City) 8–9 (1954): 77.

Williams-García, Roberto. "Una visión del mundo totonaquense." In Actes du Quarante-deuxième Congrès international de americanistes, vol. 9–B, pp. 121–128. Paris, 1979.

New Sources

Cuentos totonacos: antología (Totonac tales: anthology). Mexico City, 2000.

Culturas prehispánicas del Golfo (Pre-hispanic cultures in the gulf). Veracruz, Mexico, 1999.

Espejo, Alberto, Moraima Marín, and Rosalía Hernández. Cuentos y leyendas de la region de Naolinco (Tales and legends of the Naolinco region). Veracruz, Mexico, 1996.

Garma Navarro, Carlos. Protestantismo en una comunidad totonaca de Puebla, México (Protestantism and a Totonac community in Puebla, Mexico). Mexico City, 1987.

Ortiz Espejel, Benjamín. Cultura asediada: espacio e historia en el trópico veracurano, el caso del Totonacapan (Besieged culture: space and history in the Veracruz tropics, the case of the Totonac). Mexico City, 1995.

Roberto Williams-Garcia (1987)

Translated from Spanish by Robert Allkin
Revised Bibliography