Preface

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190884109.002.0007

Front Matter

Preface

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https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190884109.002.0007

Pages

xi–xiv

Published:

October 2018

Extract

This is a study of language and evangelization in Mexico during the first century or so of colonial rule, roughly 1525–1675. It highlights the efforts of Spanish missionaries, in collaboration with indigenous intellectuals, to communicate the gospel message in dozens of previously unknown local languages that differed greatly from each other as well as from those in the Old World. The dialogue represented in these efforts, and the indigenous responses to them, created a new, culturally hybrid form of Christianity that had become firmly established by the end of this period.

The focus on the southern Mexican region of Oaxaca springs from several sources, not least of which is the lure of a magnificent landscape and a prodigal variety of indigenous cultures. The same picturesque but rugged terrain and cultural richness posed major obstacles to the project of evangelization, magnified further by the fact that Zapotec and the other Otomangue tongues spoken in Oaxaca belong to one of the most phonetically and syntactically complex language families, certainly far more difficult to master than the better-known languages that compose the rest of the area known as Mesoamerica. Perhaps for these reasons, the region, the language, and the topic all represented relatively uncharted territory when I began my research in the early 1980s: difficult to navigate but with warm welcomes in the Zapotec communities and abundant records in the archives, including many previously unknown documents in colonial Zapotec. By the time I discovered how difficult a language Zapotec is, it was too late to switch. Besides, Louise Burkhart had already published fine works on Nahuatl as a language of evangelization in central Mexico—with more to come—and William Hanks had embarked on his monumental study of colonial Yucatec Maya, both of them concentrating on the Franciscan missions, whereas the challenges facing the Dominicans in the polyglot societies of southern Mexico remained largely unexplored. My challenge was to discover how the Dominicans preached the gospel under the especially adverse conditions in Oaxaca, what they managed to communicate, and—insofar as possible—what the message meant to the Indians.

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