Russ Davidson and Guilhem Olivier offer a meticulous and readable translation that finally makes Alfredo López Austin's magnum opus available to English-speaking readers. Originally published in Spanish in 1973, López-Austin's El Hombre-Dios: religión y política en el mundo náhuatl is one of the great classics of Mesoamerican studies. An intellectual tour de force, the book explores the complex articulations between history and myth in Mesoamerica through a study of hombres dioses, cultural heroes with supernatural powers present in the historical traditions of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican peoples. Focusing on the emblematic Quetzalcoatl or Plumed Serpent—deity, king, high priest, and prophet—López Austin takes the reader through the various interpretations offered by Spanish officials and priests, Mexican criollo intellectuals, and modern scholars to discuss cultural heroes who resist easy labels.
The difficulty lies in the variety of characters and the places, languages, and time periods in which those heroes emerge and reemerge in the historical record. In some sources a Creator God, in others a king, in others a priestly title, and in yet others a civilizing prophet deceived into sin by his enemies, Quetzalcoatl embodies these challenges for modern historians and anthropologists, who are presented with a civilization in which myth and history are intimately interlocked. Quetzalcoatl is at times a deified ancestor, or a warrior, or a god whose attributes were appropriated by lords or priests, or simply a sort of conceptual template for referencing cultural heroes and marking the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one. López Austin masterfully critiques each supporting argument and contextualizes each source, demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge of Mesoamerican history and of the Nahua in particular.
The book stresses the common ground between hombres dioses and sacred cities known in the literature as Tollans, named after the mythical Tollan, or Place of Reeds, of the Nahuatl sources. Tollans have a dual nature in that they are both mythical places and actual settlements whose preeminence and cultural prestige served to legitimize the rule of elites across Mesoamerica. Although the book focuses on the Nahua, López-Austin takes a Mesoamerican perspective, highlighting commonalities across linguistic boundaries and referencing non-Nahua sources, including Yucatec, K'iche’, and Kaqchikel Maya colonial manuscripts; Mixtec and Zapotec oral traditions; and the Spanish colonial sources on the Purepecha of Michoacán.
López Austin argues that hombres dioses embody Mesoamerican conceptions of myth, history, and change. They are the precipitate of a long history of combining charismatic leadership and ancient myths and rituals that act as representations of power relations. Hombres dioses emerge and return when chaos threatens to unravel the social order. Among them are Martín Ocelotl and Andrés Mixcoatl, both processed by the Inquisition in Mexico for resisting Christian indoctrination, and Kaqolajay, or Thunder, a mysterious priest who encouraged the Kaqchikel to flee Iximche’ after their lords had hosted Pedro de Alvarado and his troops. As late as the middle seventeenth century, hombres dioses continued to lead resistance against Spanish demands, as they did in the various indigenous rebellions that occurred in Chiapas and the Yucatán at the time.
The volume includes useful introductions by David Carrasco and Alfredo López Austin. It is a welcome and much needed addition to the relatively small body of works by Mexican Mesoamericanists available in English.
