Christianity and Indigenous Communities

The question about Christianity and its full acceptance into Indigenous communities continues to linger on a fine line of whether Indigenous communities came to a consensus of compromising with the new religion or simply eradicating it by refusing to leave behind their traditional ways of believing and creating “spiritual” consciousness. Some scholars such as, Kevin Terraciano, in his chapter, “The People of Two Hearts and the One God from Castile,” argue that Christianity was not only rejected by acts of continuing Indigenous religious practices, but also mocked because it was thought to be a lie and inferior to the Indigenous people in Yanhuitlan and Coatlan; this new religion did not coincide with theirs . On the other hand, in her book, Biography of A Mexican Crucifx, Jennifer Hughes comes to conclude that Indigenous communities accepted Christianity through their own modes of seeing parallel paradigms of their life with the life of religious images such as the Cristo Aparecido from Totolapan. They came to see this image as a representation of their suffering , their colonial journey and their need for finding religious meaning in a newly evangelized land. In Terraciano's, Two Peoples Heart, he subversively implies that Christianity was based on the idea that there had to exist some type of religious unity based on Catholicism. From this point, Indigenous population have been victims of racism, discrimination, disregard for their beliefs, uprooting and political marginalization. As Terraciano points out, in this process of “spiritual” conquest, domination can occur occur through methods of interrogation and punishment if found guilty, which was clearly the case during the Spanish Inquisition during the 16th century. Native lords were confronted both by friars, Dominicans and Spanish for their supposed allegiance to practicing “paganism,” and encouraging Indigenous communities to continue their reverence and offerings to their many “gods,” while on the surface make a menial space to pray to the “New God from Castile.” Terraciano explains how in order for Christianity to make itself dominant, the people of Yanhuitlan and Coatlan had to not only get rid of their ancestors images, burn them, but also force themselves to accept Christianity as their only “spiritual” choice. Nevertheless, Indigenous communities and to a great extent the native lords encouraged Indigenous communities to keep their faith intact . An example of this is given when, Don Fransciso, a native lord who was accused of “paganism, “ and disruptive behavior stated that the people of Yanhuitlan were not to embrace Christianity, that their gods did not come from Castile, hence a result of this was the mockery of Yanhuitlan peoples both by verbal insults and gestures towards Native Christians, “There go the Christian Castile, the chickens,” (Terraciano, pg. 7) This shows us that the refusal to indoctrinate Christianity as part of a Yanhuitlan identity was obstruct by the continuing reinforcement that Indigenous communities e where reluctant to forgetting their ancient practices and beliefs. For instance when trialed, Don Francisco was asked if he knew any prayers in Latin, Castillan or Mixtec, he admitted that he knew two, but when asked to recite them, he said he could not remember them (Terraciano, 8). This once more reiterates through the examples given by Terraciano, that native lords saw Christianity as unimportant, they did not care to learn the way of Catholicism or become subservient to the “God of Castile.” “After mass, many nobles would drink pulque and joke around that they had not understood a word of the sermon” (Terraciano 8). Ultimately, with the “ambivalence” of Christianity also came the practice of certain ritual acts which often took place in small areas or carried out in a secluded place where the Indigenous people would be safe, as the lords began to denounce that their gods were angry and had brought upon drought and death to the Yanhuitlan community because some lords were weak enough to follow a “God” who could not save them from their hunger, even as he was called the almighty and powerful. In conclusion, what Terraciano delivers this idea of a power struggle that occurred within the communities of Yanhuitlan and Coatlan as to converting to Christianity and keeping their original religion as their primal way of religious consciousness and looking at Christianity with eyes of ambiguity and uselessness to their survival, both spiritual and physical. Nevertheless, for other scholars, their research has taken them to analyze the impacts of Christianity from a different perspective, one where both Christianity and Indigeneity mix, forming a culture of religious hybridism. As Jennifer Hughes states in her book, for the missionaries, Christianization in the “New World” was a genocide to all material of religious culture, it was a process of erasure, yet with this the Indigenous population was left with an spiritual emptiness, hence images such as the Cristo Aparecido became that fulfillement not only to their seek for religious authenticity, but also serving as some type of protective force against the legacy left by colonial conquest. For Hughes, the community of Tolopan accept this image of the Cristo Aparecido since the very beginning, to them