Pre-Columbian Religions

C

Religious Leadership and Rituals

The Inca ruler and the mummies of his predecessors were the most important religious leaders. They were assisted by a hierarchical priesthood headed by the high priest of the Coricancha. Important shrines also had staffs of female attendants who wove cloth and brewed chicha (maize beer) for use in festivals. Most ceremonies involved sacrifices of cloth, chicha, plants, or animals. Human sacrifice was practiced, but only on the most solemn occasions and in times of disaster.

An elaborate ritual life surrounded the mummies of deceased rulers, who were treated as if they were still alive. They were maintained in state in their palaces, and they continued to own the property they had accumulated during their lifetimes. Their descendants managed the mummies' property for them, consulted them as oracles (bearers of messages from the gods), made sacrifices to them, ate and drank with them, took them to visit one another, and brought them out of their palaces to participate in major ceremonies. Much simpler rituals of ancestor worship were practiced in rural areas.

D

The Destination of Souls

The Incas had a more optimistic view of the afterlife than the Mayas or Aztecs. As protective ancestral spirits, dead Incas continued to play an active role in the world of the living. They revealed themselves through the huacas and were cared for and worshiped by their descendants. The Incas were strongly moralistic, and they believed the souls of virtuous people joined the sun in heaven. Those souls had plenty to eat and drink. They remained connected to their descendants, and their lives continued much as they had on earth. The souls of evildoers went to the underworld, a cold and barren place where there was nothing to eat but stones.

VI

Native Religions Today

In the centuries following the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru most Native Americans were at least nominally converted to Catholicism (see Roman Catholic Church). The blending of native and Catholic beliefs was a complicated process, and it followed different courses in different areas. In general, the Aztecs made Catholicism the core of a new religion that also incorporated native beliefs, while the Mayas retained native beliefs as the core of their religion and added Catholic elements. The Inca case, perhaps the most complicated of the three, represented an intricate blending of native and Catholic beliefs, aided by certain parallels between the two.

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In essence, the Spanish conquest of 1519-1521 destroyed the core of Aztec religion—the cult of warfare and human sacrifice. The Aztecs were no longer able to feed the sun, yet the universe survived, and Huitzilopochtli was discredited. Aztec religion had lost its focus by 1531, when, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to an Aztec man named Juan Diego. Devotion to the Virgin spread rapidly, and within six years 9 million Indians had been baptized as Catholics in central Mexico. Worship of some Aztec gods and goddesses, most notably ancient agricultural deities, persisted. These deities were blended with Catholic saints in the new religion.

In contrast to the Aztec case, when the Spanish began their conquest of the Maya area, Maya religion was already fragmented. The great religious and political centers of the Classic period had been abandoned more than 600 years earlier, and even the Post-Classic centers were in decline. The religion practiced in hamlets and villages emphasized ancient agricultural deities—such as the rain gods (Chacs)—who proved to endure. Maya folk religion still centers on these agricultural deities, and Catholic and native beliefs are more distinct from each other than they are among the descendants of the Aztecs.

The Incas, like the Aztecs, had a central imperial cult: the worship of the royal mummies. However, the Inca imperial cult, like the Mesoamerican worship of agricultural deities, was an expression of the ancient and widespread religious tradition of ancestor worship. The Spanish destroyed the royal Inca mummies and their cult, but not the underlying tradition of ancestor worship. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Inca and Catholic beliefs were blended, revealing parallels between the two traditions. For example, both the Incas and their Spanish conquerors made special commemoration of the dead during the month of November and had penitential rites that involved confessing sins to priests.

In recent decades evangelical Protestantism, especially in the form of Pentecostalism (see Pentecostal Churches), has been spreading rapidly among Latin American Indians. At the same time, community-based social action movements are a growing force within Latin American Catholicism. Whether these are short- or long-term trends, and what effects they will have on native religious traditions, are unresolved questions.

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