Faced with a multiplicity of unknown languages, many of them unrelated to one another and none similar to any language familiar to Europeans, how did Spanish missionaries convey the essence of Christianity to the indigenous peoples of Spanish America and persuade them to accept the doctrines and sacraments of Roman Catholicism? In her impressively researched book, Nancy Farriss addresses this question in detail. In so doing, she lays out the overwhelming difficulties entailed in language learning by the men charged with responsibility for conversion and the limitations of effective translation and what they implied for evangelization. She also provides a richly detailed picture of the complex and shifting world of Spanish-indigenous relations in New Spain, with particular focus on Oaxaca and the objectives and activities of members of the religious orders, above all the Dominicans, in the region.

When Europeans arrived in what they would call the kingdom of New Spain, the densely-populated province of Oaxaca, which lay south of central Mexico, was home to indigenous groups that had remained independent of the so-called Aztec Empire centered on Tenochtitlan (the future site of Mexico City). Today, the best-known of the groups that inhabited the region are the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, both of which shared the tradition of creating pictographic documents similar to those produced by other Mesoamerican groups. In fact, however, in Oaxaca Europeans encountered a stunning linguistic variety that immediately raised the most basic question regarding (and, as they would find, greatest obstacle to) evangelization, namely how to communicate with the people they called Indians. What language should they use?

The expansion of the central Mexican Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire, both military and economic, had provided considerable impetus for the spread of their language, Nahuatl, well beyond the territory the Aztecs actually controlled. Thus Nahuatl already to some extent had become a lingua franca for the immensely diverse Mesoamerican peoples, and its usage expanded after Spaniards arrived in Mexico, not least because they recruited large numbers of central Mexicans to accompany them as they fanned out in expeditions of conquest to the south, west, and north. In some instances, these Nahuas relocated permanently. There were people who were bilingual, meaning that in the early years, Nahuatl speakers almost invariably served as intermediaries between Spaniards and Indians in Oaxaca. Ultimately, however, the friars in Oaxaca realized that there was no alternative to learning at least some of the local languages, which in the early years could be accomplished only through reliance on local speakers. In linguistic and ethnographic terms, the overall results of this project in New Spain were astounding. Farriss writes that “the study and recording of all the major indigenous languages and many of the minor ones, their alphabetization, and their codification in formal grammars and vocabularies, almost all within the space of one generation, represent a massive intellectual achievement unsurpassed in the annals of linguistics” (84). One of the important arguments that she makes regarding the production of not only dictionaries and grammars but catechisms and sermons is that, far from being subordinates and “informants,” as they are usually labeled, the native speakers with whom the friars collaborated were the real authors and translators of these religious materials.

Farriss traces the trajectory of the missionaries’ gradual realization that there was no alternative to learning indigenous languages. Attempts to rely on gestures or visual images to convey the gospel failed, because these were not necessarily received as Europeans intended; the latter required oral interpretation, as was true for the indigenous pictographic records. In the early years, therefore, they relied on interpreters, almost all of them indigenous. Both Franciscans and Dominicans recruited the sons of the native elite to be schooled in Spanish, Latin and Christian doctrine, but as important as the creation of this group of educated interpreters was, they could not entirely resolve the dilemmas entailed in effective evangelization. Were they loyal to the friars and were their translations accurate? How could confidential confessions be solicited in the presence of a third party in what Farriss writes was meant to be “an intelligible dialogue between priest and penitent” (49)?

Because proficiency in indigenous languages was understood as essential for evangelization, tensions between regular and secular clergy, between creoles (American-born Spaniards) and peninsulars, and even within the Dominican Order itself often revolved around who was best qualified to deal most closely with the Indians. Although certainly there were seculars who learned indigenous languages, especially those who had the advantage of having been born or raised in New Spain and learned another language when they were children, the friars benefitted from a more systematic approach to language learning and a supportive milieu that would allow them to dedicate themselves to the task.

In her preface Farriss notes that the present volume is not the book she intended to write. Her central interest was, and remains, understanding “religious change within indigenous society through the objects they held sacred” (xii). While language and words may seem more precise or fixed in their meanings than objects and images, translation posed its own problems, as it never could be entirely accurate, given the cultural distance that the friars aspired to bridge. In the end, Farriss concludes, the missionary project failed because of insurmountable problems of communication. By this she does not intend to suggest that evangelization had no impact; but the changes that occurred were “often along totally unforeseen lines” (285).

This book is a must-read for a range of scholars and students interested in evangelization, language, Spanish-indigenous relations, the colonization process, and religious and church history in Mexico and more generally in early Spanish America. Farriss writes with grace, erudition, and authority. If the book is not necessarily the one she intended to write, we are the beneficiaries of her detour into the complexities and limitations of the Christianization process in Oaxaca.