October 16 - 18, 2007 

Juan Bautista de Pomar and the Appropriation of Christian Discourse in Relación de Texcoco

José G. Espericueta

Colonial Latin American Literature and History

Indiana University at Bloomington

Juan Bautista de Pomar’s Relación de Texcoco (written in 1582) forms part of the body of responses to the Relaciones geográficas questionnaire that was sent to Spanish America under the order of Phillip II as part of an effort to accumulate both geographic and historical information about the Spanish colonies.  The resulting Relaciones geográficas maps and texts, which included responses from cities and smaller communities, offer an important context in which representations of indigenous histories and identities can be examined.

Seeking to mediate between an indigenous past and a colonial present, Pomar’s text presents a history of the pre-Colombian city-state Texcoco that conforms to the Relaciones questionnaire, detailing indigenous forms of government and customs that include “idolatrous” practices and human sacrifices.  Yet while Pomar denounces many regional customs, they are ultimately presented as divergences from within a proto-Christian society led by the virtuous rulers Nezahualcoyotl and his son Nezahualpilli (Pomar’s great-grandfather and grandfather respectively).  In his descriptions of these rulers, Pomar frequently uses Christian terminology to represent their rule in Tezcoco.  However, while he engages in this rhetoric to describe the past, Pomar likewise uses it to criticize contemporary colonial policies of forced labor that failed to conform to the values espoused by Spanish Catholicism. With this in mind, I propose that by engaging with colonial authority and appropriating a particularly Spanish discourse, Pomar’s Relación de Tezcoco can be considered as a “transcultural” text, as defined by Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.  This reading suggests that, rather than an example of acculturation, the recourse to a Spanish discourse can be understood in a political sense, both creating a space for self-legitimization and offering a means to critique colonial order.

In studying the Relación as an example of a selective appropriation of Christian discourse, I will likewise be engaging in a critical dialogue with Walter Mignolo’s analysis of Juan Bautista de Pomar in his book The Darker Side of the Renaissance.  While Mignolo’s interest in studying the Relaciones Geográficas is an understanding of the ways in which Western literacy took precedence over indigenous pictographic traditions, his few mentions of Pomar relegate the author and his Relación to a context of acculturation.  Placing Pomar at a point between indigenous and Spanish epistemologies, Mignolo criticizes Pomar’s “celebration of the letter” over a more indigenous oral tradition (44).  Suggesting an eager acceptance of Spanish forms of knowledge, Mignolo nevertheless neglects the more subtle ways in which Pomar engages with colonial discourse. For purposes of the present essay, it will therefore be suggested that Pomar’s text should be understood in a political sense, considering the engagement with Spanish rhetoric within the imperial context that structured the Relaciones questionnaire.  This reading will ultimately allow for a better understanding of forms of resistance to Spanish colonial rule in Mexico during the sixteenth century.

About José Espericueta

José Espericueta holds a B.A. in both North American and Hispanic Literatures from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He completed a M.A. in Hispanic Literature in 2003 from Miami University of Ohio with a focus on Colonial Latin American religious discourse. His Masters thesis was entitled "Un camino purificativo: Negación sanjuanina y desengaño en _El pastor de Nochebuena_ de Juan de Palafox y Mendoza." Upon completing his degree, José traveled to Krakow, Poland where he taught Spanish and directed a Spanish language film series in conjunction with local language schools. José is currently working on his Ph.D. in Colonial Latin American Literature with a focus on indigenous historiography and respones to colonialism. His current project includes a survey of several of the textual responses to the Relaciones Geográficas questionnaire that circulated throughout the Spanish colonies at the end of the sixteenth century.

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