Inscribed in historical and divinatory manuscripts and transmitted through oral traditions transcribed in the sixteenth century, the intellectual output of pre-Columbian Nahua sages and scribes has been acknowledged by all students of Aztec civilization. In recent decades, scholars have mined the voluminous corpus of colonial Nahua writings for insights into indigenous life under Spanish rule—the life of the mind as well as the struggle for survival. Yet contemporary Nahuas rarely have access to the intellectual output of their ancestors or support for speaking Nahuatl, let alone for producing new works in their native language. An exception to the latter situation is the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ; Zacatecas Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology), located at the University of Zacatecas, which supports linguistic and ethnological research by students who are native speakers, in an effort to revitalize the language and ensure its survival.
In this engaging book, Kelly McDonough argues that Nahua people have always included intellectuals, “learned ones” who create and pass on knowledge. Juxtaposing five case studies of past intellectuals with short pieces by three contemporary Nahua writers (two from IDIEZ), McDonough explores the opportunities and constraints affecting Nahua intellectual productivity in different eras. A noteworthy experiment in tying the past to the present, this book dissolves the usual boundaries between historical, linguistic, and literary work and between ethnohistorians, ethnographers, and indigenous writers. As part of her research, McDonough discussed the earlier figures with Reading Circles from IDIEZ, and these discussions enhance the later case studies. The five individuals profiled cannot adequately represent five centuries of Nahua civilization. Nevertheless, one closes this book with a sense that the playing field has become more level, that different voices have had their say in a centuries-long conversation that McDonough modestly moderates and contextualizes but does not dominate. One also sees cause for hope, as the young writers from IDIEZ pursue their graduate degrees and carry Nahua intellectualism into the future.
The case studies, arranged chronologically, begin with the Jesuit grammarian Antonio del Rincón—and I must quibble with his designation as “Nahua” or “native.” Jesuit chroniclers say that Rincón was descended from the royal line of Tetzcoco but, as McDonough herself notes, he may have been of mixed Spanish and Nahua descent. This is indeed the more likely scenario, and in his day precluded an identity as an “indio.” Nevertheless, he was one of only three men I know of with full or partial Nahua ancestry who were admitted into the Jesuit order during the early colonial period, and the only one to publish a book: the first grammar authored by a person born in the Americas. Rincón's treatment of vowel length and glottal stops—linguistic features ignored in earlier grammars, by Spanish-born Franciscans—in his 1595 work evidences his fluency and his ability to move beyond established models for describing language.
I have only praise for McDonough's other four choices. They begin with don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, an annalist and officeholder whose work brings public events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tlaxcala to vivid life. Here we see how colonial leaders manipulated what McDonough terms the three “discursive pillars of Tlaxcalan authority and rights” (65): insistence on their legitimacy as descendants of the conquest-era rulers who helped Hernando Cortés defeat the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, avowals of loyalty to the Spanish crown, and displays of Christian piety. Zapata y Mendoza asserts a proud Tlaxcalan patriotism while lamenting changes to indigenous self-government.
Next, McDonough rehabilitates the reputation of the professor and lawyer Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca, who found ways to be a Nahua activist and intellectual in the nineteenth century, when liberal elites were legislating Indians out of existence. His transcriptions of colonial documents and his imprecise translations are better known to scholars of Nahuatl than his work as an advocate for Indians. Manipulating conservative and Catholic discourses as well as liberal and scientific ones, he fought the privatization of Indian and church lands and worked “tirelessly to improve the lives of marginalized citizens, in particular his Indian brethren” (98). Galicia Chimalpopoca supported, and worked on progressive social legislation with, the doomed Emperor Maximilian, whose downfall destroyed his own career and nearly got him assassinated.
Literate Nahua women have been rare throughout history, and McDonough aptly opens her study to doña Luz Jiménez (1897–1965), whose wisdom entered the literary record via her role as an ethnographic “informant” to anthropologists Fernando Horcasitas and Robert Barlow. After her unconventional career as a model for Diego Rivera and other artists, Jiménez found another way to perform her indigenous identity: by narrating, and helping to translate and edit, traditional stories and her childhood memories of the Porfirian and revolutionary eras. Though never paid enough to escape poverty, Jiménez relished her associations with artists and intellectuals, and is properly considered one herself.
McDonough's chapter on Ildefonso Maya Hernández (1936–2011) benefits from interviews she was able to conduct with this painter, writer, and theater director. Highlighted are his 1987 play “Ixtlamatinij” (The Learned Ones), a scathing critique of bilingual education as practiced in twentieth-century Mexico, and his “Ama Tlanamiquiliztli,” a set of works recounting contemporary Nahuatl myths of creation and destruction. Reinterpreting the ancient codex tradition of indigenous pictorial manuscripts, Maya Hernández pairs painted images with text in Nahuatl and Spanish on each page.
The five featured individuals evidence a wide range of responses to colonial and postcolonial forms of domination and marginalization, writing (or, in Jiménez's case, narrating) in different genres and pursuing various career paths, from Jesuit priest to artists' model. All insist on the legitimacy of Nahua ways of speaking and knowing, and refuse to fall among the silenced and subjugated masses envisioned by Spanish colony or Mexican state. McDonough has produced a valuable testament to the diversity and tenacity of Nahua intellectual culture.
