New light on the road to Damascus? Some further thoughts on acculturation as seen in the auto La Conversión de San Pablo

Abstract:This article focuses on aspects of the early interaction between the Franciscan friars and the indigenous people of Mexico. The most appropriate name for the natives of the Valley of Mexico is contentious and confused by the fact that scholars frequently refer to the Azteca, the Mexica and the Nahua interchangeably. According to Durán, in the tenth and eleventh centuries waves of Aztecs or Azteca, having left their ancestral home in Aztlán, moved down into the region of the Lake Texcoco. Here they quickly established themselves, building up an empire in the period immediately preceding the arrival of the Franciscans. Despite the fact that there were up to fifty semi-autonomous, self-governing states, each with its own language, the Nahua and their language Nahuátl became the dominant tribe and their language became the chief language of Franciscan evangelism around the Lake Texcoco. Thus it seems reasonable, for the purpose of this article, which deals with a drama written in Nahuàtl, to refer to the Nahua or, where appropriate, to the generic Azteca.The article explores ambiguities in the relations and interpretations of the Christian message in the early period of conquest and evangelisation; it suggests that there was a greater degree of mutual accommodation than has been previously recognised and that the friars in their relations with the Nahua were changed, as the Nahua were by their contact with the friars. Consequently, the classical subaltern/dominant interpretation should be viewed in a different light as an experience of adjustment, uneasy at times, fruitful at others, between two vastly different yet strangely similar cultures. These ambiguities are explored in detail in one of the most curiously 'alternative' autos La conversión de San Pablo, where Paul is accused of murdering Sebastian rather than Stephen and the whole text is overlaid with Aztec cultural and religious references, so that the Christian message and the native interpretation sit side by side in an almost symbiotic relationship or a curious truce.Resumen:Este artículo tiene dos objetivos. En primer lugar, intenta mostrar que el proceso de aculturación franciscana en México en el siglo XV1 era menos lineal y más flexible que antes considerado: en efecto, que los frailes aprendieron tanto de los Aztecas como los Aztecas aprendieron de ellos.En segundo lugar, toma como ejemplo de este proceso mutuo, los autos sacramentales asombrosos. Considera en particular el auto 'alternativo' La Conversión de San Pablo donde, no solo San Pablo se encontró acusado del asesinato de San Sebastian, en lugar de San Esteban, sino también era expulsado al Infierno por crímenes de avaricia y riquesa ostentosa. Así en este auto las dos culturas, Azteca y Francesca, se sentan una al lado del otra, cada una conservando su integridad.