NAHUA THEATRE

  One concrete example of how portrayal of colonial religious thought by way or morality plays may have failed to convert Nahuatl thinking is the fact that the status of women in Nahuatl culture was diametrically opposed to the status of women in Roman Catholic tradition. This apparent incompatibility may in fact have prevented understanding or acceptance of the Nahuas toward colonial proselytization. Periodically female characters filled the role as the protagonist in plays. In Ravicz translations of “Wills and Testamentary Executors” and the “Final Judgement” a foolish woman is portrayed as living life without regard to the teachings of the Church.[1] Ravicz explains that, “We can only assume that women were judged to be more regularly disobedient in these respects, or that it was easier to attack a problem by using a female as a symbol of negative values than to attack the male directly. The fear of God and divine retribution is traditionally more easily instilled in to women than men.”[2]

 

 

    Women in Nahua culture were recorded as being highly respected and served a dynamic role in society. Miguel Portilla-Leon shares about the prolific female poets of Nahua society and explains how a chronicler, Tezcocan, describes one woman in particular. He shares that, “She was so wise that she could discuss with the ruler and the wisest men in his kingdom, and was very gifted in poetry.”[3] In James Lockhart’s monograph, Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology, he shares a transcript of sons greeting there mother in the morning. The document shares one of the sons greeting, “Oh my noble person, oh personage, oh lady, we do not wish to distract you; we bow down to you, we salute your ladyship and rulership.”[4]

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

     

      In The Nobleman and His Barren Wife, the Barren One confesses her wrongdoings to a priest by expressing a long illustrious confession and ending with, “Let my neighbors learn a lesson from me, the wicked women who are here, so they don’t do the same thing.”[8] The female protagonist in this play as well as others mentioned may have again ruffled some feathers with Nahuas who had no problem with the way they had been living their lives for hundreds of years. What came across to them in these plays may have guilted them into the role the Spanish colony now wanted them to fulfill. What can be drawn from the excerpts mentioned above is that women were being seen in a negative light and the methods used in the plays could have been as difficult for Nahuas to accept as trying to fit a square peg though a round hole.