Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Ad-Free & Extended Episode 77: The Miraculous Virgin of New Mexico!

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Ad-Free & Extended Episode 77: The Miraculous Virgin of New Mexico! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantis, where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and we help combat the spread of disinformation about these very topics.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Ruben Ariano Tlakatecat.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: What is going on, Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Tlakatecat, out there in Tehaslan?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, just trying to make it, man.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like everybody else.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, just trying to survive this sea of non nonstop that's coming our way.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's endless.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Endless.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's ridiculous.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's becoming exhausting.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Becoming?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's been.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's only like two months or three months, however long it's been.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Over three months at this point.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: But it's been in the several years.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: It feels like a very long time.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta keep I gotta use I gotta use the sauce here.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: What do you got there, sir?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um I got some uh some Mr.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: President.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Nice, nice.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've got some uh good old uh Irish whiskey right here.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Some of my favorite digging into your roots into your Irish roots.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: I know, and unfortunately, like when I get my DNA test back, I don't think there's any Irish, which I was kind of bummed out about.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you like the Irish whiteness in your at least it'd be some cool whiteness, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right, at least be fucking cool, damn.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Dang well.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, for this episode we've been talking about doing for a while.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I remember it was several years ago, I took you to Santa Fe to look at the painting that we're going to be talking about in this episode, and that trip sticks out in my mind especially so because of who we bumped into while we were there walking around, and we see uh Ruth Bader Ginsburg just like stroll by us, and we just kind of looked at each other like, wait, did that just happen?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was pretty crazy.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: I remember that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: That was cool.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, I was like, man, I should go talk to her, but then she had like these massive Secret Service guys.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming they're Secret Service, I don't know who bodyguards of some sort, yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: Whoever the Supreme Court justices used to protect them, that's who it was.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there was a few around her.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we went out, there was like a whole um line of black sedans, I remember that, parked outside of the museum.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, those were simpler times, my friend.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: Salute to uh Ruth uh to RBG.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Rest in peace.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Those were simpler times.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, not to get off track, I've been looking forward to talking about this uh topic for a while because we've we've often wondered aloud to each other about Don Santes in New Mexico and this particular image and why there's no connection between the two.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I discovered why in in my research.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And two, if they do know about the image, I don't think they actually know the the roots.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: The history between Yeah, what it was meant.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think when we first uh you know, I don't remember what episode it was that we talked about this briefly, but I think one of the things that maybe if I remember correctly, that we talked about was that um maybe the reason why they don't know or use the image, even those that might have heard of it, is because they don't think it it's part of the dance tradition because it's not from Mexico, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's that could be it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think I think really that's what it is, right?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean but if you if you reframe it, right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you reframe the danza and say, well, you know, does everything have to be oriented towards, you know, the Metropole, Mexico City, Tenochtitlan?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Can it not be more localized?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: Can you not have sacred ceremonies and and dances uh and rituals that are more localized, even though the tradition might be influenced or imported from elsewhere?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: Can't you make it your own?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like what's the big deal with that, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: Does it does it make it less authentic if you if you begin to change it up?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Excellent point.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to uh explore that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get yeah, I want to explore that later on in the episode.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: But uh before then, I just want to say that for this episode, dear listeners, I will be using the journal articles, The Virgin of the Macana, emblem of a Franciscan predicament in New Spain by Alona Katsu, published in 2003, and Nuestra Señora de la Macana by Fray Angelico Chavez, published in nineteen fifty-nine as my sources, as well as an article from the Smart History website titled The Virgin of the Macana and the Pueblo Revolution of sixteen eighty by Dr.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Emanuel Ortega.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Smart History?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's smart history.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in the logo, the art part is like a different color.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's art history, but like made smart, I guess.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a cool website.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's all about art history.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I found this article on there, and and um yeah, it's I poked around the website a bit and they got some good stuff.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Immanuel Ortega.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: No, is Dr.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: Immanuel Ortega from New Mexico?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't look into his bio.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Frey Angelico Chavez certainly is or was from New Mexico.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: What about Ilana Katsu?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think she is she works at the LACMA.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because her name does sound familiar.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: Ilana Katsu.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell The name of this episode is The Miraculous Virgin of New Mexico.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not talking about myself while in high school, okay?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's a miracle.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a pivotal moment in which the Pueblo people of New Mexico rose up against Spanish colonists, driving them out and securing their independence for 12 years.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: During the uprising, approximately 21 Franciscans and nearly 400 colonists lost their lives.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Interestingly, no artists of that time ever bothered to memorialize this significant event in their work.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't until the later 18th century that visual representations of the revolt began to emerge.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: One such image, a painting known as the Virgin of the Macana, is now housed in the New Mexico History Museum.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we can confirm that because we went and looked at it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Interestingly, only a handful of paintings of the Virgin of the Macana exist, all dating from the latter half of the 18th century.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Each of these paintings exhibits similar iconography.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: The Virgin Mary is depicted as a crowned statue, bleeding from a small wound on her forehead and holding a macana or macuait, a wooden weapon adorned with obsidian blades commonly used by the indigenous people of Central Mexico.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: She is prominently positioned in the center of the composition, standing stoically as the chaos of the Pueblo revolt unfolds around her.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Following the Spanish invasion of the Americas, images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and various saints were introduced to the colonies.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: A popular genre of religious artwork was known as statue paintings.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: As the name suggests, these paintings depicted statues, such as the Virgin of Toledo, or Nuestra Senora de Sagrario de Toledo, which was brought to New Spain by Franciscan missionaries.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Revered as their protector, Mary accompanied the missionaries as they established missions and sought to convert indigenous peoples.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: In the painting held in the New Mexico History Museum, Mary is positioned centrally, flanked by two kneeling figures, a Franciscan friar in a blue habit on the left, and an indigenous man wearing a headdress and loincloth on the right.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: He holds a macana for support.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: The backdrop illustrates the chaos of battle, with natives on the left hurling stones from towers while Spanish soldiers shoot guns.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Below, an indigenous man raises his macana to strike a friar, while wounded or slain Franciscans pierced by arrows lay scattered.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: This imagery presents the Puebloans as barbarians, quote unquote, attacking unarmed friars.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: To the right, Spanish forces retaliate, charging on horseback while firing their weapons.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: The Pueblo people are depicted assaulting the Virgin of Toledo statue, and in the upper right, a native man is shown hanging from a tree.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Above this scene of violence, God the Father and the Holy Spirit are framed by clouds.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I love the idea of just like God chilling, watching this it's like he's watching Game of Thrones at home or something.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just taking in all the bloodshed.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: When the Spaniards established Santa Fe in 1607, the Franciscans were tasked with converting the Pueblo people to Christianity.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: This religious order, which had been active in New Spain since the early conquests of central Mexico, aimed to eradicate what they deemed as satanic native idolatry and uphold Christianity as the true faith.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Paintings like The Virgin of the Macana, which depict natives attacking a representation of Mary, illustrate how colonizers framed indigenous resistance as a literal assault on their religion, thus further justifying their colonization efforts.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Under the Franciscans, Pueblo traditions faced systematic suppression.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Noncompliance with Spanish prohibitions on ceremonial dances often resulted in harsh punishment, and many sacred sites and objects were destroyed.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Spanish accounts from this period emphasize native resistance to colonial authority while downplaying the violence and oppression inflicted upon indigenous peoples.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And speaking of the violent oppression of indigenous people, I thought it would be pertinent to take a moment to talk about a little something known as the requirimiento.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know if I'm saying that right.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Did I pronounce that right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Close enough.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: The requirmiento or requirement was written in 1510 by Spain's Council of Castile to be read aloud to indigenous people during Spanish conquests in the Americas.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: It claimed that the Pope had authority over the entire world and had given Spain control over the Americas, except for Brazil, in a 1493 decree.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: The document told indigenous people that they had to accept Spanish rule and Christianity, or face being conquered, enslaved, or killed.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Often it was read in Latin without translators, or even shouted from ships to empty beaches, showing that it was mainly meant to justify Spanish actions and provide moral and legal justification for Spanish conquest.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like what performative nonsense, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: To read this aloud to like an empty beach, it's just or to read it in Latin to people who have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: The last two paragraphs of the Requiermiento or requirement describes to the native communities what would happen to them should they agree to the terms laid out in the speech, and what to expect should they refuse Christian rule.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: It reads If you do so you will do well, and that which you are obliged to do, their highnesses, and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives and your children and your lands free without servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you like and think best.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: And they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our holy Catholic faith, as almost all inhabitants of the rest of the islands have done.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: And, besides this, their highnesses award you many privileges and exemptions and will grant you many benefits.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: But if you do not do this and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the church and of their highnesses.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command, and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him, and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us, and that we have said this to you and made this requisition.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: We request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this requisition.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's so fucked up.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, it's interesting that that this uh um comes up in this episode.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one of the primary sources that I use in in my first half of American History 1301, it's always this is this is the one that I begin with.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I tell uh I show students, right, like what is the purpose of this?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, like you said, it's performative, right?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's it's part of the the the way that the Spanish, and then later on, other European nations are gonna try to sort of mimic this and and and do the same thing.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: But the whole point of this is that they're trying to cover their butts with this because it's a legal process that they're doing.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: They're saying we're doing this legally.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: We have we've received permission from their highness through the Pope, and we have a notary public, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: So from the very beginning, the Europeans come to the Americas and in their process of colonizing and conquering and enslaving people, they're using the quote unquote the legal system to do it, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so we've got this piece of paper here that we brought with us, and we gave you an option and we give you a choice.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: Now, whatever happens from this point forward, it's in your hands.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And if you refuse, we're gonna do all this horrible shit to you.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And oh, by the way, it's your fault.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's your fault.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, bling the victim.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the emergence of the Virgin of the Macana.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: A manuscript written shortly after the Pueblo Revolt provides essential insights into the iconography of paintings depicting the Virgin of the Macana and how they reflect the Franciscan viewpoint of these events.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Franciscan friar Agustin the Vetencourt chronicled the origins of the Virgin of the Macana in his 1698 work, Teatro Mexicano.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Vetencourt's account was based on funeral sorry.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Vetencourt's account was based on funeral orations honoring fallen Franciscans and historical narratives from Spanish soldiers.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Later, eighteenth century artists would reference Vetencourt's writings when creating their own representations of this Marian figure.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Vetencourt documented that a replica of the Virgin of Toledo statue was brought to New Mexico by Franciscans after Conquistador Juan de Oñate invaded the area in fifteen ninety eight.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: The statue served as both a protective emblem for the missionaries and a sign of Spain's divine favor and might, embodied by the presence of the Virgin Mary.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: He recounted a miraculous event that occurred shortly before the Pueblo revolt.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: The Virgin of Toledo reportedly appeared to the six-year-old daughter of the Spanish governor, healing her of an ailment and delivering a message.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: She instructed the girl to inform her father and other colonial leaders to treat the Franciscans better, as tensions between the missionaries and colonial authorities were escalating.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: The Virgin warned that failure to improve their actions would lead to divine retribution.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: She allegedly said Raise thyself, child, and tell that this province will soon be destroyed for the lack of reverence that it shows my priests, and that this miracle will be the testimony of this truth, that they mend their ways, should they not want to experience punishment.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well dramatic.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: A little a little heavy for a six-year-old like you would think the Virgin Mary would have a little more tact than talking to a child.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: This apparition was meant as a warning to the colonial government, but it went unheeded.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Colonial authorities continued to provoke the Franciscans, and more importantly, the oppression of the Pueblo people persisted, culminating in the Pueblo revolt six years later.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Tradition holds that during the revolt a native warrior struck the forehead of the statue with a macana, hoping to smash it to pieces, but only managing to chip off a small piece from the forehead.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: From the Spanish perspective, the statue's survival was seen as nothing short of miraculous, especially since churches and other Christian images were destroyed.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Paintings of the Virgin of the Macana highlight this moment, with the visible wound on the statue serving as a reminder of this miraculous occurrence.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: This act of violence symbolically transformed the Virgin of Toledo statue into the Virgin of the Macana.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: A small macana was fashioned and placed in the statue's hands, and the pronounced wound on its forehead represented native aggression and more significantly, the Christian victory over demonic barbarism.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: The weapon that had once been wielded by the natives became a powerful Christian symbol, justifying the Spanish subjugation of indigenous peoples and their perceived idolatry.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: After the revolt, the statue was moved to Mexico City and eventually placed in the main Franciscan convent of San Francisco after 1754, where it continues to be revered today, though it is likely not the original statue.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: In depictions of the Virgin of the Macana, indigenous people are shown attacking and killing Franciscans.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: From the Franciscan perspective, these friars were portrayed as martyrs, sacrificing themselves for their Christian faith.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Paintings such as the one currently displayed in the New Mexico History Museum illustrate this martyrdom process and align with the Franciscan narrative that these deaths paralleled Christ's sacrifice at the hands of pagan Romans.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Images of the Virgins of the Macana were designed for a Franciscan audience, serving as powerful affirmations of the Franciscan mission to convert native peoples during a time when Spanish administrators believed that the religious order was failing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Context clarifies why an event from the late seventeenth from the late seventeenth?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: This context clarifies why an event from the late seventeenth century became a significant subject for artists in the later eighteenth century.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: It also elucidates why there are fewer paintings of the Virgin of the Macana compared to other miraculous Marian apparitions, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: The narrative of the Virgin of the Macana served a specific Franciscan agenda.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: In the paintings of the Virgin of the Macana, two types of indigenous individuals are depicted the violent aggressors who kill the Franciscans and the devout indigenous figures kneeling before the Virgin Mary, signifying a transformation from their violent tendencies.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: In other scenes, violent barbarians, motivated by unholy desires, attack both the Franciscans and the Marian statue.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: The devil himself is depicted in the painting holding the rope from which a native man is hanged, even as the devil is understood to have incited the revolt.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's weird.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: That is weird.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: And what's also weird is like the Virgin Mary appeared and was like, This is gonna happen as a warning.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then they try to blame it on Satan when it happens.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just the messenger.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Very odd stuff.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: The hanged man is represented as the individual who struck the Virgin statue in the scene directly below.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: In colonial Spanish American art, the barbarian, quote unquote, was typically depicted as half naked, roaming rural landscapes and in need of spiritual salvation.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: From early sixteenth century maps and prints of the Americas illustrating bands of naked cannibals to eighteenth century casta paintings depicting nomadic tribes on the fringes of the empire, the iconography of the uncivilized barbarian remained prevalent throughout colonial visual culture.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: One aspect of these paintings did evolve over time.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: The locations where natives were depicted.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: In the early 1500s, images of indigenous people were often situated in regions like Central Mexico, where Spaniards had defeated the powerful Mexica Empire.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Representations of barbarians were enriched and detailed renderings of local flora, geography, and fauna.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Following the success of the Pueblo Revolt, artists began to portray natives on the fringes of the Spanish Empire in Texas, New Mexico, and California.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: These artworks served as visual evidence of the necessity for stricter colonial governance in these areas.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: In the Virgin of the Macana, the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary transforms the uncivilized, violent native into a subdued individual converted to Christianity, symbolized by the native men kneeling beside her in the foreground.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thevout Indian became a recurring motif throughout the three hundred years of Spanish dominance in the Americas intended to illustrate the successful conversion of indigenous peoples.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: The depiction of native peoples before and after their Christian conversion underscores the power of the Virgin's intervention during the Pueblo revolt and by extension, the efficacy of the Franciscan mission system in New Mexico.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: So if I I mean I am a Don Sante, but if I were like a Catholic, not one of these heathen danses, and I knew this history, I wouldn't use La Virgen de la Macana either.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like even as a Catholic, I would look at this and be like, well, the whole the way that this image is used is to depict us as savages in need of being saved.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: As a non-Catholic.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I can't even relate to it as a Catholic, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can't even put myself in that headspace to be like, oh, well, why don't we use this image in the Dansa Test?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it makes it so different from the the Virgin Mary and Juan Diego.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he was an indigenous man who supposedly you know was approached by the Virgin, the hill of the Payacac.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, was he not in Nita's?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Was he already a Christian Indian at that point?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the story.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the story, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: He was on his way to like we don't believe any of this.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is true.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, let's let's let's go ahead and let's get that out of the way.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: Get that out of the way.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like the story is completely made up Hope Cloth, right?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, according to the story's narrative, like was he already a Christianized uh indigenous man or Juan Diego?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Juan Diego, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was supposed to have already been converted a Christian.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like he was on his way to go pray.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: To go pray.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: The virgin.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: So then it would make sense for Dan Santos to like I mean, I I don't think there's ever hardly any mention of Juan Diego and but like the Virgin, right?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like the Virginia Guadalupe.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: She's supposed to be the representation of Tonantine and and of course, we're not talking about Quatlique, but just Tonantin as the mother, right?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Mother Tateo.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: One of the or or the the prefix for all the the the female tateos.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well not all of them, but a majority of them happen to be a mother type figure, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Female creation type figures would be venerated as a tonan sin.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so so that's not a good example to contrast, I guess, the la macana with with an a danza tradition.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like some other indigenous tradition that we know of uh that is closely associated with a with a virgin that has some kind of ritual, some kind of dansa associated with it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's that other one that the the virgin and I well she wasn't a virgin, she was uh I'm thinking of the the lady in blue.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Remember we had a brief discussion about that.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: But she wasn't a virgin, she was an actual nun or a sister or whatever, right?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: She was she was in back in in Europe somewhere, she was uh supposedly translocating to the Americas prior to the the some of the uh the indigenous peoples along the border and like in Texas and along the Rio Grande, like up to the astral projection style.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: Is it astral projection or or translocation?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Is it the same thing?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it's the same thing, I don't know.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: But she was like supposedly like appearing to them and like talking to them about Jesus.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so the story is that when the Spaniards first arrived among the Caddo people and other people in South Texas, that they had already been primed by this lady who had appeared to them in blue about the not not necessarily about the the the Spanish coming, but that they had heard of Jesus already, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like this like they had been primed, like, oh look at this.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're ready to accept the word of God.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: How convenient.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: So that's not a good example either.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm trying to think, like, what's what's another good example here for Love?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think this one is so unique in that it is it's like directly tied to violence and like an indigenous revolt.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so it makes it hard to compare it to other virgin traditions or Marian traditions.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: But what gets me about it is that so they because we've seen the painting, and and the thing that struck me the most about the painting when I saw it the first time is that you have like this image of the Virgin Mary holding a makwawi in her hand.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that like I was like, whoa, what the hell is this?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so then I started like looking into it.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to say we we we we looked at an actual statue.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Was it a painting or a statue?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because I remember it was a painting.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a painting of a statue.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: The painting of the statue.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: So like this is before cameras, so to disseminate the imagery of various saints and virgins, they would have instead of painting just like the virgin in situ, they would paint the statue.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they would paint the statue.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's weird with the band happening behind it.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is weird, but we're all swept.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Why not just paint the virgin in in a scene, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're like you're I don't know, like painting the statue.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's so strange.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know that yeah here in New Mexico there are some Santeros and painters who have created depictions of of La Virgen de la Macana.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I've thought about getting one just to like have it in the house because it has such an interesting uh story behind it.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's that's what's missing.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm looking at your background, uh you have all the you know have your bookshelves filled with books, and you have that um a moshli uh up at the top, and I'm thinking he needs there's something missing.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's what it is.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think you need the Vicana de la Macana front and center up there.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: I doubt any I could commission anyone to do it, but do like uh a subversive version of it.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: You mean there is there's no subversive Santeros in New Mexico?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure there are, but I don't know any.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you're out there, uh hit me up.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: There might be a commission your way.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I might have a commission for you.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, this this image and you know, to just tied to the to the Pueblo Revolt holding a Makuawi in her hand.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Then of course, you know, they they say like the the original, the actual statue was taken to Mexico.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that might be one of the reasons why it's not so well known here in New Mexico is that they took the actual statue and and they keep it somewhere else.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because as Catholic as this state is, you would think that a story of Marian apparition happening in colonial New Mexico, like everybody would know that story, right?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that this image would be like all over the place.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: It would almost be like a freaking one of the symbols of the state, you know.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: It should be on the flag, on the state flag.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like a like, what's the word that I'm looking for?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: A mascot.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, like so you know how in the Chicano movement, you know, Chavez started the tradition of using Le Vidjan because it's a very recognizable symbol of humility, being humble, being of the people, being pious and religious, and and it's a recognizable symbol for Mexicans.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: So he took that, right, for the for his for the farm worker movement, and then the broader movement at large in some areas also kind of adopted it, right?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's very iconic and and you can't you can't uh mistake it for anything else.
• 33:29
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm wondering how come in New Mexico the Chicanos there didn't take La Macana Virgin and prop her up and in their bad make it a symbol of like resistance and like subvert the image and turn it into one of local resistance.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that needs to be you.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: I leave it upon you, my friend.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, because it's I mean, yeah, it's a virgin and it's tied to Catholicism, but she's got a makana in her hands.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: She's holding the makwah.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: So so she's got the makwawi now.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: She's ready to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: Next time uh we see each other, I'll have a tattoo on my back.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's what I'm that's the spirit.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm talking about, brother.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't don't think the funk, homie.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for those of you who are premium members, you're going to be getting an entire extra segment to this episode in our premium feed, where we will be talking about the indigenous Mexicans who were present at the Pueblo Revolt.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't just the Macwait that was there.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: There was some Native Mexicans there too.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you are not a premium member, please consider becoming one.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: Just follow the link in the show notes, and for a mere five bucks a month, five dollars a month, you will get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and access to our Discord server where you can interact with us and other fans of the show.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I gotta tell you, I've really been enjoying the Discord server.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it's nice to like be able to pull away from social media and all the noise there and just have like a more concentrated like okay, here's some people that I I can talk to and we could have conversations there without all the noise.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: And speaking of speaking of the Discord server and the conversations we're having on that channel, like some of the things that we post are like current events, news items that relate to Mesoamerican things, Chicano things.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the things that I've posted recently is uh real real briefly, I'll I'll just uh pop off some of the article titles.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: The the Willie Chavaria X Adidas Originals SS25 collection is unapologetically Chicano.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is from Hype Blast.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: So Willy Chavaria, if you don't know who he is, he's a Chicano um fashionista.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um and he uh was recently featured in in some shows uh in I think it was in Paris, if I'm not mistaken.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then recently at the Met Gala, like he uh designed like the really cool uh artist named Maluma or something to that effect from Central South America.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: But he apparently also partnered with Adidas of all brands, and he's got this cool collection.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that I want to give for myself is this cool sweatshirt that says Chicano in the front, and it's got like that black, it's kind of like a it's not exactly like the farm worker eagle, speaking of farm workers, but it's it's kind of reminiscent of it.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's reminiscent, and it's a cool image.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: It is glad you posted that.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: So that's one thing that we we kind of discuss on the Discord, just giving our listeners a taste if they want to join the discourse.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: Those of you that are thinking about becoming premium members, some of the uh the other things that we discuss, for instance, uh there's this article from The Prospector, which is the University of El Paso, I mean of Texas at El Paso.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, this is a student newspaper called The Prospector.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: They have an article that was published recently entitled From Picks to Fists Up.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't know anything about El Paso, they're known as the their mascot is like this minor, right?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so he's always holding like this uh axe, uh pickaxe, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's called From Picks Up to Fists Up, movimiento chukanex and the new generation of chicanismo.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so chucanex is uh uh a mashing of two words.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: You have chicano or chicanex, and then chuco, el chuco.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: El paso has been known as el chuco for a very long time because, in case you don't know, speaking of azutzuts, the pachuco style originated in El Paso, and so for a long time among the Chicanada, El Paso is referred to as El Chuco, short for Pachuco, and so they have a cool article about a professor there at uh uh at UTIP who started uh a Chicano club called Chucanex Movimiento.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: She is her name is uh let's see, let me put on my readers for this one.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Tiny font here.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: Her name is Ruby Montana, a lecturer in the Department of Chicano Studies and Languages, Linguistics and Humanities at UTIP, and she established the Chicano Studies Club, which takes the name Movimiento Chukanex, a nod to the original movement as well as El Paso's unique culture.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: So big shout out to I believe she's a Dr.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: Montana, Professor Montana at UTEP, and to all the students who are part of this.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: Congratulations on getting this ball rolling rolling out there.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: And also, I need to send a shout-out, if you don't mind, to some people out in El Paso when I was there as a visiting scholar before the pandemic here uh hit that year, 2019, uh 2018 to 2019.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so Dr.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: Miguel Juarez, uh he's a fan of the show.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure if he still listens, but he was a listener uh early on.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Me and him, we did a podcast when I was out there, uh, and we hit on local issues uh pertinent to the border and to El Paso.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: And also to Dr.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: uh David Romo, David Romo, who um is uh local historian also from UTIP, and he's published a couple of books on the local history of El Paso related to the Chicano Mexicano community, and to his wife Ligia, uh who was uh I believe uh I'm not sure she's already attained her PhD, but she was in the PhD program over at UTIP when I was there.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: So big shout out to them.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: And last but not least, also I want I wanted to uh mention that over in Denver at the Denver Art Museum, they're having a reception, opening reception on the day that this episode goes live on May 13th.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that's uh Tuesday from 5 p.m.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: to 7 30.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's called Chicano Humanities and Art Council Community Spotlight opening reception, where they're going to be highlighting Chicano artists from the Denver area.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, this is just to give you a little taste of the of the sort of things that we talk about on the Discord, you know, we talk about Nahuatl, we talk about Chicanismo, Chicanidad, Mesoamerican issues, also Native America at large.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're currently a premium member and not haven't signed up for for the Discord, we highly encourage you to do so.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're not a premium member, if this doesn't entice you to become a member, I don't know what will.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Come on now.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: And with that, until next time, remember the truth is like medicine.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't always taste good, but it is always good for you.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now for our premium members, we're going to get started with some extended content that all you free listeners don't get.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: The Mexicans of the Pueblo Revolt.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: For the bonus section of this episode, I want to address a question that many have asked me.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: How did a Macana or Macuawit end up in New Mexico in the first place?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the answer is simple.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: When the Spanish colonization of what is now New Mexico and southern Colorado took place, they brought with them thousands of Mesoamerican warriors to handle most of the fighting.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: These forces included Mexica, Tlaxcalteca, Otomi, and Pure Pecha warriors.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: These Mesoamerican warriors always outnumbered their Spanish counterparts, sometimes by three to one.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, we know that during the Coronado Entrada, or whatever whatever you want to call it, the Coronado expedition, Mesoamericans comprised like a full three-quarters of the forces that were brought up.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a lot of people.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: That is, that's a lot.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: And of the few hundred Spanish men at arms who went on these expeditions, most of them were not professional soldiers, which meant that they were usually not trained, and they definitely did not have experience in combat.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Suffice it to say, most of the fighting was carried out by Mexican Indians, not Spanish forces.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: A point that I find really interesting is the Spanish adoption of what are known as armas de la tierra or indigenous weapons instead of the cumbersome European metal swords and lances.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: And this doesn't exclusively include indigenous weapons, like sometimes the Spaniards would take the weapons they had with them and modify them to fit in to with the local traditions.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a fascinating part of history that not a lot of people talk about.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, if I may interject real quickly, I have a colleague who was at SMU when I was there.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um I believe he graduated like maybe a year or two uh before I did, um, because he was already there when I entered US.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: He was like a year ahead of me.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he's from Monterrey.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so he wrote a book called Frontera Armada or something to that effect.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it was published in Mexico, it's in Spanish.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes into this, like he like investigates how, at least along the the um what is now the Texas uh you know, Coahuila Tamalipas border at that time when the Spanish were first, you know, coming up into those areas, they had adopted a lot of the armor and the the weaponry of indigenous societies because they realized, first of all, they didn't have the required uh materials necessary to replace it and to fix their their weapons from Europe all the time, especially if they were on the frontier zone, right?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because they were so far away from the metropole from Mexico City.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: And second of all, they realized that they were they were better in terms of like maneuverability and yeah, they were lighter.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Lighter and and even like, for instance, the armor, instead of the heavy metal armor that the quote unquote conquistadors wore, like they could they adopted the cotton armor of of Mesoamerican societies because they realized.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: That it was very good to protect against like uh especially arrows.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and indigenous armor would defend against indigenous arrows.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like who would have thought?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's in so if anyone's interested in um um it's called uh front uh frontera armada energetic up.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no problem.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: It it just feed it feeds right into the next line.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Spanish invaders discovered pretty early on that wearing metal armor, helmets, swords, and other weapons was a logistical and physical nightmare in humid tropics and sun-scorched deserts.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: To deal with this, the Spanish adopted Mesoamerican weapons, such as the Makwawit or Macana, and the Ishkawipili, or cotton armor jackets of native warriors.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: This stands in stark contrast to the New Mexico fantasy cosplay, which imagines droves of Spaniards arriving in glistening armor and funny shaped helmets brandishing their swords.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: In reality, the colonizing forces more closely resembled a traditional army from central Mexico.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: I argue that the so-called Spanish colonization of New Mexico would be far better described as a Spanish Mesoamerican colonization.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is also worth noting that hundreds of Mexican Indian women, known as tortilleras, accompanied these forces.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: They were responsible for feeding the men and caring for the animals.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: So just like think about it, the logistics of these massive armies.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: So with Coronado, they think there was like three to four hundred Spaniards or men at arms and like two to three thousand Mesoamerican warriors.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got horses, you've got animals, you've got livestock.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, who's going to take care of these animals and who's going to feed all of these?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like the county mowers, right?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's what they yeah.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just the supply line logistics of that alone necessitates that all of these women were there.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: And Michelle and I were just visiting this site here in New Mexico called the uh the Piedras Marcadas site, where a massive battle took place between Mesoamerican and Pueblo people.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the the head archaeologist there, Matt Schrader, great guy.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get him on the show.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: He uh he brought this up that um there were all these tortilleras who accompanied the men and that they're almost completely left out of the historical record.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: So Tortilleras.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty cool.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean who call who called them tortilleras?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh where does that come from, do you know?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Tortilleras, it's in the uh the Spanish documents.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Powell So the Spanish themselves call them las tortilleras.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been asked if these indigenous forces were primarily slaves, taken by force and made to fight on behalf of the Spanish, which is kind of like a nice way of fantasizing about it, right?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, well, my ancestors didn't come up willingly and do all these horrible things in combat.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think that this would be logistically possible.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thousands of combat-hardened Mexica warriors would have made short work of a few hundred untrained Spanish hayseeds.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like just the logistics of having 2,000 warrior slaves, and there's like a couple of hundred of you, and only half of you know how to fight, that doesn't seem like it would end well.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: But mainly, you know, the Spaniards were pretty obsessed with keeping documents of who was who in their company.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the historical record refers to these Mesoamerican auxiliaries not as slaves, but they refer to them as Indios Amigos.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: So just a title that doesn't really denote, you know, slave status.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: So friendly Indians.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, yeah, Indian friends or friendly Indians.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, historical records on the Indios Amigos are scant, but if you dig deep enough and comb through the archives like an obsessive little lunatic like I am, you find evidence everywhere.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: One such piece of evidence is the letter written by then Governor Antonio de Ottermin that details the events of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: According to Ottermin, the attack came as a complete surprise, as it was wholly contrary to the existing peace and tranquility in this miserable kingdom, not only among the Spaniards and natives, but even on the part of the heathen enemy.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's such a weird quote.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to pull some excerpts from this letter that Othermin wrote describing the events of the Pueblo revolt.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's um I pulled four paragraphs and I thought it would be it would work best if I read a paragraph than you read a paragraph.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the letter reads in part on Tuesday, the thirteenth of the Fed month, which is imagin I how I imagine but it would be in Spanish anyway.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: At about nine o'clock in the morning, thee came inside of us in the suburb of Analco, which is one of the oldest colonial colonial barrios in New Mexico and it has a Nahuatl name, which means on the other side of the river, but I digress.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: In the cultivated field of the hermitage of San Miguel, and on the other side of the river from the Via, all the Indians of the Thanos and Pecos nations and the carries of San Marcos armed and giving war whoops.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: As I learned that one of the Indians who was leading them was from the Via and had gone to join them shortly before, I sent some soldiers to summon him and tell him on my behalf that he could come to see me in entire safety, so that I might ascertain from him the purpose for which they were coming.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Upon receiving this message he came to where I was, and since he was known, as I say, I asked him how it was that he had gone crazy to being an Indian who spoke our language, was so intelligent, and had lived all his life in the via among the Spaniards, where I had placed such confidence in him, and was now coming as a leader of the Indian rebels.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: He replied to me that they had elected him as their captain, and that they were carrying two banners, one white and the other red.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is kind of badass.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that the white one signifies peace and the red one war.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thus, if we wished to choose the white, it must be upon our agreeing to leave the country.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if we chose the red, we must perish.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because the rebels were numerous and we were very few.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: There was no alternative, inasmuch as they had killed so many religious and Spaniards.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I I love the way he frames that because he's like, I can't believe how brutal they are.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: They're giving us this choice.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's like motherfuckers, you know, referring back to the requerimiento.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: They used to go in hand.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_03: The requerimiento at that point hadn't been used in at least a couple of centuries.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, but they he I'm sure he'd read it.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think the requerimiento gets a lot of flag for the word the the the wording in it.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: But in all honesty, I think that after the the great debate about whether or not indigenous people had a soul that occurred still kind of early on in the colonial period, in the exploratory period, I think that that document gets abandoned.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_03: So it's used for maybe a decade.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: So like from I want to say possibly from like 1500 to like 1520, perhaps.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, a couple decades at most.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well they're getting off light here because this is this wasn't even a requirement.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: They were just giving them a choice.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: You guys could leave or you could stay here and die.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, so this is the same same letter, right?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so it continues.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: On hearing this reply, I spoke to him very persuasively to the effect that he had and the rest of his followers were Catholic Christians, asking how they expected to live without the religious, and said that even though they had committed so many atrocities, still there was a remedy, for if they would return to obedience to his majesty they would be pardoned, and that thus he should go back to his people and tell them in my name all that had been said to him, and persuade them to agree to it, and to withdraw from where they were, and that he was to advise me of what they might reply.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: He came back from thee after a short time, saying that his people asked that all classes of Indians who were in our power be given up to them, both those in the service of the Spaniards and those of the Mexican nation of that suburb of Analco.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: He demanded also that his wife and children be given up to him, and likewise that all the Apache men and women whom the Spaniards had captured in war be turned over to them, inasmuch as some Apaches who were among them were asking for them.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: If these things were not done, they would declare war immediately, and they were unwilling to leave the place where they were because they were awaiting the Taos, Percuries and Teguas nations with whose aid they would destroy us.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is percriries here meaning the Picuris?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: Must be Picuris.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: Seeing his determination and what they demanded of us, and especially the fact that it was untrue that there were any Apaches among them, because they were at war with all of them, and that these parlays were intended solely to obtain his wife and children and to gain time for the arrival of the other rebellious nations to join them and besiege us, and that during this time they were robbing and sacking what was in the said hermitage and the houses of the Mexicans.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: I told him, having given him all the preceding admonitions as a Christian and a Catholic, to return to his people and say to them that unless they immediately desisted from sacking the houses and dispersed, I would send to drive them away from there.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: Whereupon he went back, and his people received him with peals of bells and trumpets, giving loud shouts in signs of war.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder what these trumpets were.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if they were uh Underground?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: With this scene after a short time that they not only did not cease the pillage, but were advancing toward the villa with shamelessness and mockery.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: I ordered all the soldiers to go out and attack them until they succeeded in dislodging them from that place.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Advancing for this purpose, they joined battle, killing some at the first encounter.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Finding themselves repulsed, they took shelter and fortified themselves in the said hermitage and houses of the Mexicans, from which they defended themselves as part of the day with the firearms that they had and with arrows.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: We having set fire to some of the houses in which they were, thus having them surrounded and at this point perishing, there appeared on the road from Tasuke a band of the people whom they were awaiting, who were all Tewas.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: Thus it was necessary to go to prevent these latter from passing on to the villa, because the Casas Reales were poorly defended, whereupon the Setanos and Pecos fled to the mountains and the two parties joined together, sleeping that night in the Sierra of the Villa.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the rebels remained dead and wounded, and our men retired to the Casas Reales with one soldier killed, and the Maese de Campo, Francisco Gomez, and some fourteen or fifteen soldiers wounded, to attend to them and entrench and fortify ourselves as best we could.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I've always I mean the the letter is really long, but I find these paragraphs fascinating because it makes specific mention to the Mexican nation of that suburb of Analco.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: So and we know that Nahuatl was being spoken in New Mexico at the time by all these people that they were bringing up.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: I could just imagine this like multi-ethnic gathering.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like I couldn't I can't even imagine what it must have looked like, right?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: You have all these Europeans, but then you have like Nahuatl-speaking natives, and then you've got all the Pueblo people speaking, you know, Tewa and Tiwa and Toa and Karas and and just this mixture of cultures.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like it just sucks that it it it was violence that that was the impetus for bringing all these people together because that's such a fascinating gathering of people.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and they make reference to the to the Mexicans, right?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: The houses of the Mexicans, like two more times.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's like there.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's in the historical record, but you have to like poke and prod and and and well, you know how it is.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: You sit there and you just go through and go through and you're looking for stuff, and when you finally find stuff, you're like, oh, all right, cool.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: Here's another piece of that puzzle that that we've been trying to crack.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because this is, you know, a firsthand account giving testimony to the presence of these Nahuatl-speaking mercenaries who lived in the Baruan Alcor.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't slaves as I think that's the point, right?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_03: That you've been trying to say that these people weren't necessarily slaves, that they were there on a mission, and uh, I'm sure that they were being compensated to a certain degree, either, I don't know about monetarily, maybe to some point, but maybe with the promises of land and tenure and leadership and positions of power and things like that.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and they even, if we if we analyze this sentence here, you know, where he says that all classes of Indians who were in our power be given up to them, both those in the service of the Spaniards and those of the Mexican nation of the suburb of Analco.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it was they were already making this distinction between natives who were in their power, who were in the service of the Spaniards, and those who had their own barrio, their own community, the suburb of Analco.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: The suburb of Analco.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Who were were there living not as slaves, but as as active participants.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: So can we say that this is the first official uh gathering of the nations?
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: And with that, folks.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: We hope you enjoyed this bonus content.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: I hope so too.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: God damn you