Staging Christ’s Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico

FAIN: FEL-262248-19

Louise M. Burkhart
SUNY Research Foundation, Albany (Albany, NY 12222-0001)

A book-length study of six Nahuatl-language versions of the Passion of Christ as written and performed by indigenous Aztecs in 18th-century Mexico.

Six colonial Passion plays in Nahuatl (Aztec), analyzed in light of a 1768 Mexican Inquisition case aimed at surveilling and suppressing this practice, document a controversial, indigenized performance tradition based on hand-written scripts that circulated among Nahuatl-speaking communities. Each chapter of the proposed book takes a set of scenes and explores the available options and the choices made as writers and directors staged Christ’s last days and cast their neighbors in the roles. What was obligatory for a proper Passion? How did versions vary? Which elements drew colonial censure, and why? How did Passion plays comment on Indigenous life beyond the stage? For an Indigenous man to embody Christianity’s incarnate God was a striking act of appropriation that understandably discomfited colonial authorities. Focusing on how Nahuas localized this universalizing narrative, this book will offer an unusually in-depth view of religious life under colonial rule.