Early Philosophical Views and Practices

Research and Development

Even with my current progress with the Lomnitz work, I have not gotten to the point that I would like to due to other things going on.  With that said, I will post more information from Lomnitz this week, but will look for another source to focus on next week and come back to this work.  My intent is to gain other opinions and data on the matter, even though Lomnitz has a fair amount of information regarding this topic.  Regardless, this week looks into understanding why the early Spanish settlers and remaining indigenous embraced their particular beliefs and practices regarding the dead.


New Spain: The Cultural Blender

As was discussed last week, some of the Spanish settlers brought over their Christian beliefs, but they also brought over some of their homeland beliefs regarding funerary practices and public action.  We would see this with the burial practices, the aspects of the "good death," but also because of the particular beliefs the Spanish had towards the body and soul.  Typically, the Spanish viewed the these elements as separate entities in which the soul was deemed immortal and more powerful over the body exposed to the temporary pleasures of life. (Lomnitz 154-55)  This temporary belief was part of the foundation for why Christians would bury their dead in designated areas (over time these would be the responsibility of the church).

For the Indigenous, the body and soul were cooperative parts that worked very closely in life and to some extent in death.  In fact, Lomnitz demonstrated that, "unlike the Christian soul, the Mexican soul had a life that was in some respects parallel to that of the body..." (pg 160)  This relates with the common belief of many Mesoamerican groups that souls could inhabit things in the living world such as birds and stones. (Lomnitz 162)  Along with this belief, another common practice that would occur involved bringing the bodies of the dead to very large caves called machayes for respecting and preserving the bodies.

(could not find any images of machayes, but I thought this cave from Chihuahua, Mexico would do)

The Spanish clergy hoped to suppress the various practices of the indigenous including the various machayes.  However, one particular practice of Mesoamerican festivals included the persistence of alcohol.  As Lomnitz stated, "For indigenous peoples, inebriation, dancing, and feasting involved forms of communication with the spirits that diverged widely from...a proper Christian funeral." (pg 172)  The clergy were willing to allow these festivities to occur so long as the indigenous gave up their practices of pagan idols and human sacrifice. (Lomnitz 172) 

Purgatory and Days of the Dead

The role of purgatory became very influential to the indigenous as the clergy demonstrated this was where the poor would go after they died.  Since often times the poor could not provide for their own funerary services, the indigenous believed it necessary to still aid them "...by offering meals that helped sustain them in the netherworld and prayers that hastened their passage to heaven." ( pg 227)  This played a key role in the development of the ofrenda and the calavera (skulls) that have been talked about in previous blogs as offerings to the dead. 

Along with this development, two other developments during the late 16th and early 17th century shaped the emergence of the contemporary Days of the Dead.   The first involves the domestication of the dead for the indigenous population, in which they could commemorate their loved ones within their own homes as well as in mass.  Part of this developed out of the need to accommodate the poor so that they did not have to spend so much to commemorate their deceased during the Days of the Dead.  The second would be the revival of idols, specifically Christian representations of their Catholic saints.  It is said that these relics produced a "...widespread belief in their miraculous and curative powers..." (Lomnitz 248)  These relics often were representations of the various saints, not the pagan idols they were more familiar with, and were often also within the households as some of the most precious possessions.

(Ofrenda within a home)

(one head of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, one of several accepted relics during this period)


Source: Lomnitz, Claudio. Death and the Idea of Mexico. New York: Zone Books, 2005.