| Once again we get the impression that human sacrifice took place but yet no real citations are provided and the general tone of the Spaniard conquerors is one of an expectant hostility which does not appear to be taking place, initially. In some instances, the promotion of new gods in Spanish Indian cultures was tolerated by the natives initially, but they were not so willing to tolerate the replacement of their own deities with those of the Christians. Several attempts by Spanish conquerors were made to force compliance among the natives but it was not always so successful. Many of the tribal people just kept doing what they had always done respecting their own religious practices. Friar Diego de Landa was caught up in a scandal in his local province when the natives in the Yucatan had been found practicing old sacrificial rituals. In 1562, he instituted an inquisition torturing the heretics and burning their sacred Maya hieroglyphic books. He was recalled back to Spain following this event. By the middle of the 16th century, friars like Bernardino de Sahagun, worked closely with central Mexican nobles and compiled histories of their rituals, language and culture. In 1541 the Mixton rebellion in Guadalajara saw approximately 100,000 natives rise up against 400 Spaniards. They were defeated by 30,000 Aztecs armed with Spanish guns. The Aztecs had given up and joined rank with the colonialists, except for the few tribal leaders who scattered into the foothills and were eventually subdued and killed. When Tupac Amaru was finally murdered it put an end to their tribal civilizations. Both a Papal Bull in 1537, and an Edict called the New Laws, in 1542, pronounced Indians human beings capable of salvation and worthy vassals of the crown. At this point, Indian slavery was supposedly outlawed. (8) Francisco Hernández de Toledo (1514-1587) was the court physician to the King of Spain. In 1570 Hernandez was ordered to embark on the first scientific mission in the New World and collect and assemble information about all the medicinal plants, herbs and animals. He spent seven years collecting information on more than three-thousand species of plants. He wrote of three kinds of intoxicating mushrooms and referred to them as “teyhuintli.” He wrote that the mushrooms caused “… not death but a madness that on occasion is lasting, of which the symptom is a kind of uncontrolled laughter… these are deep yellow, acrid, and of a not so displeasing freshness. There are others again which, without inducing laughter, bring before the eye all sorts of things, such as wars and the likeness of demons. Yet others there are not less desired by princes for their festivals and banquets, and these fetch a high price. With night-long vigils are they sought, awesome and terrifying. This kind is tawny and somewhat acrid.” (9) |
Hernandez also described Peyote, calling it Peyotl zacatecensis and wrote: “The root is nearly medium size, sending forth no branches or leaves above the ground, but with a certain woolliness adhering to it on account of which it could not be aptly figured by me ... It appears to have a sweetish and moderately hot taste. Ground up and applied to painful joints, it is said to give relief. This root causes those devouring it to foresee and predict things ... or to discern those who have stolen from them some utensil or anything else; and other things of like nature… On which account, this root scarcely issues forth, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover it and eat it.” (10) According to Schultes, in Flesh of the Gods: “The ecclesiastics went so far as to incorporate in a religious manual of 1760, questions in the form of catechism that equated the eating of peyote with cannibalism.” (11) Don Guillen Lombardo was a surveyor in the Taxco region when Indian mine workers complained to him of their abuses by the higher-level Spanish overseers. Eventually he became a defender of the rights of the poor and oppressed. His intention it appears, was to build an entirely devout Catholic Mexico and turn it into a utopia with himself in charge. The Inquisition ordered his arrest in 1642 and discovered his papers, with forged signatures from foreign countries supporting his attempt to overthrow the Spanish government. (12) In a transcription from 1655, we read the following concerning Lombardo: “Don Guillén had drafted a “Proclamation of Independence” in which he outlined the design of the new Mexican society—a social order that promised equal rights to all of the nation’s inhabitants.” … “In one of the 918 psalms he began writing while in prison in 1654, Don Guillén asserted that the “humble Indians” and “poor Ethiopians” were, like the Europeans, children of God.” (13) Don Guillen Lombardo was a sincere and compassionate man. He saw himself as a beacon of light and possible hope for the millions of disenfranchised Mexican Indian people. He was an idealist and a revolutionary. The Inquisition arrested him for “consulting with an astrologer” “practicing magic” and “selling peyote.” (14) Further on, we get an account from Gonzalez Obregon, which reads: “Felipe Méndez, the neighbor who denounced Don Guillén, told the Inquisitors that he saw his neighbor give the Indian Don Ignacio the “prohibited herb” peyote. When the Indian took the drug, Satan began speaking through him, encouraging him to pursue his plan for independence for the sake of the poor indigenous and Spanish populations of the Taxco mine region.” (15) (8) A brief history of Mexico, the Founding of an Empire (9) Flesh of the Gods, p. 9 (10) ibid, p. 11 (11) ibid, p. 13 (12) González Obregón, La Inquisición y la independencia, p. 75 (13) Transcription located in Gabriel Méndez Plancarte, Don Guillén de Lámport y su “Regio Salterio”—MS. latino inédito de 1655 (Mexico City.: Ábside, 1948 (14) Brenner, “The Auto de Fe of 1659,” p. 77 (15) González Obregón, La Inquisición y la independencia, p. 84 |