Images and cultural mestizaje

Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Images and Cultural Mestizaje in Colonial MexicoAuthor(s): Serge GruzinskiSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 16, No. 1, Loci of Enunciation and Imaginary Constructions: TheCase of (Latin) America, II (Spring, 1995), pp. 53-77Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773223 .

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Images and Cultural Mestizaje in Colonial Mexico

Serge Gruzinski CNRS, Paris

Abstract Images, like many other cultural objects, convey processes that cannot be reduced to language or to the logic of discourse. Therefore, it is difficult to trace their influence in written archives and they often remain neglected by the historian. I will argue that in the Mexican context of conquest, colonization, and transculturation images played a decisive role insofar as linguistic, ethnic, and social barriers limited verbal interaction between the conquerors and the conquered. I will support my argument by showing what uses and concepts of images were promulgated by the Church and how the game of images contributed to the process of cultural mestizaje.

The Field of Our Research

My research is concerned with the study of the programs, strategies, and policies related to images in colonial Mexico, with the multiple interventions they induced and anticipated, and with the functions they filled in a society in which many races and cultures were obliged to live together. In short, I am most interested in the image as an instrument used to carry out a policy of cultural mestizaje (crossbreeding) and as a response to this policy. My intention here is neither to explore the history of art and style nor to analyze the content of images, as Robert Scribner (1981) did in his brilliant study of images as a means of propaganda for the Lutheran reform. As Pierre Francastel (1967) reminded us, images are loaded with thought and language; therefore, they cannot easily be reduced to words. The figurative thought con- stitutes specific and dense matter that often anticipates the products

Poetics Today 16:1 (Spring 1995). Copyright ? 1995 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/95/$2.50.



54 Poetics Today 16:1

of conceptual thought. From Francastel as well as Michael Baxandall (1986a, 1986b) and Daniel Arasse (1986), I borrow the concept of "visual order," which images spread and impose, and I use it whenever it seems to clarify the reality I am studying. Finally, Remo Gui- dieri (1987) provided many insights into the relationships among icon, image, fetish, and object.

This interest is connected with another one. I would like to apprehend the shifting contours of the kind of image that I conceive of as a historical product and, above all, a Western object, which has nothing immutable or universal about it. From this perspective, it is not a question of defining the image abstractly and extempore, much less one of joining the theoretical discussions that this object has inspired and is still inspiring in our Western cultures (see Mitchell 1986). On the contrary, it seems to me more interesting to study the evolution of the imaginaires that appear in the intersection of expectancies and an- swers, in the joining of sensibilities and interpretations, in the crossing of fascinations and passions aroused by images. I prefer to emphasize the imaginaire in its totality and mobility (which, in fact, corresponds to the mobility of life) because I do not want to lose myself in a systematic description of the image and its contexts, thus distancing myself from a reality that exists only through their interaction. Moreover, whenever possible, I will try to avoid the usual schematizations and classifications of our Western thought, such as the classical oppositions between signifier and signified, form and content, subject and ob-

ject, as well as the disciplinary divisions of knowledge-the economic, social, religious, political, and aesthetic fields. It seems to me that these divisions and categories, though still useful in many cases, often prevent us from developing innovative insights. One of the justifications for historical research on images is to remind us of the historicity and

relativity of the concepts and classifications we apply to the field of the

image. There is no doubt, for instance, that the image is a notion that

originated in the Aristotelian and humanist tradition, even though we sometimes forget its specific historical and geographical roots and consider it an "invariant" to be found in all times and in all cultures.

The Image as a Means of Westernization and Programmed Mestizaje

For both spiritual and linguistic reasons-the requirements and ur-

gencies of evangelization, on the one hand, and the many impedi- ments created by the Indian tongues, the lack of dictionaries and in-

terpreters, and the difficulties of translation, on the other-the image played a major role in the conquest and colonization of the New World

during the sixteenth century. We must remember that the discovery of America was contemporaneous with the introduction of engraving and the techniques of the quattrocento painters.



Gruzinski * Cultural Mestizaje 55

With regard to the case of colonial Mexico in particular, one must distinguish two different periods and two different types of evangelization and image policies. Until the 1560s, the mendicant orders controlled the evangelization of the Mexican Indians. The Franciscan friars, who introduced the Christian image in Mexico, were an elite order associated with the pre-Reformation humanist trend. The first missionary period in Mexico began with the destruction of Indian idols (i.e., the annihilation of images of the enemy), as if the coexistence of Christian images with those of another mode of representation that appeared to be a demonic rival were intolerable. This "idoloclasm" seems to have constituted another way of waging-and winning-war against the Indians. The missionaries explicitly acknowledged the decisive importance of images in the context of a strategy of conquest and colonization, with chroniclers and friars alike demonstrating a pre- cise knowledge of the capacities of images and a corresponding fear of their dangerous Mexican equivalents, the idols. Bad images were not only considered mediums for cultural memory and instruments of domination, but also emotional and psychological displacements as well as deceptive bait and demonic decoys. Needless to say, Mexi- can "idoloclasm" began and spread precisely when Western Europe was experiencing its own iconoclastic explosions over so-called papist idolatry-no mere coincidence, surely (see Phillips 1973).

Quite soon after this aggressive and destructive sequence occurred, the systematic imposition of Christian images was implemented along two lines. First, the spread of the Christian message (i.e., Christian dogmas, symbolism, and iconography) was enhanced by images, for the friars used them to Christianize the Indian populations. Such Franciscans as Jacobo de Testera and Diego Valades were personally involved in the diffusion of this pedagogical technique, attempting to imprint the Holy Scriptures on the minds of the Amerindian population, whom they considered illiterate but susceptible to the allure of new things and of painted images. The Franciscan friars therefore used painted canvas on which were represented "in an astute way and order" the Creed, the Decalogue, the Seven Deadly Sins, and other subjects. The process was systematically employed, and it proved to be successful-so much so that it was submitted to the Council of Indies and adopted by other religious orders, despite the disapproval and opposition of the Franciscans. I wonder if the friars realized that, in showing their painted canvas to the Indian neophytes, they were repeating the gestures of pagan priests who, not so long before, had displayed their pictographic codex in ritual ceremonies. Did these Indians look at the Christian images in the same way (and with the same fears and expectations) as their ancestors had viewed the older paintings? I shall insist again later upon the decisive role of ambiguity and misunderstanding in the cultural encounter (see Palo-




mera 1962; Guidieri 1984). Second, the spread of Christian images entailed the imposition of a visual order and an invasion by a West- ern imaginaire. The process went far beyond the mere unveiling of a new iconographic repertoire (characterized by predominantly anthro-

pomorphic imagery). It involved the inculcation of Western European cultural meanings of person, god, body and nature, causality, space and time, history, and so on. Christian images displayed a figurative thought that was all the more disconcerting by virtue of its never being clearly explicated by its exponents, the missionaries. The frescoes and canvas paintings as well as the religious dramas not only conveyed an

array of gestures, forms, and colors, but also promoted a new con-

cept of the "event," considered as a logical extension of the attitudes and behaviors associated with European schemas ranging from the

representation of emotions and the Aristotelian notion of causality to those of determinism and free will (see Baxandall 1986a; Gruzin- ski 1986). Underpinning the stylistic and perceptual grids were other

grids that served to organize-however subtly and unconsciously-all aspects of the humanist relationship to the real. The diffusion of the Christian image by the friars served the project of creating a "new man," even though the mendicant orders were not fully aware of all the implications of the instrument they were using.

As a consequence, not even the friars' own commentaries could ex- haust the complex range of significations entailed by these images. Because they involved so many cultural and theological references (as well as tapping into a deep reserve of historical memory), images were a source of information to be studied at length, an instrument for teaching/learning, and, to a lesser degree, a focus of illusion and fascination. Apart from being a difficult and demanding cognitive ob-

ject, the image of the fresco was also subject to strict control. The friars were very cautious when it came to using their images, and they struggled continually against demonic images, namely, Mexican idols. Obsessed with the danger of promoting idolatry, they always kept in mind the censures and prohibitions of the Bible, anxious lest their

images themselves become the objects of an idolatrous cult. Some- times this attitude dictated radical positions that could even verge on

openly rejecting the cult of (Christian) images (cf. the case of Ma- thurin Gilbert, the "apostle of Muchoacan," in Fernandez del Cas- tillo 1982: 1-37). For example, the friars were notorious for banish-

ing images of Christ from the crosses they erected in front of their new churches. They thought that the symbols of Christ's Passion- the nails, the scale-could represent the bloody episode without run-

ning the risk of showing a practice-crucifixion-that the Indians

might have confounded with human sacrifice. In fact, since they were influenced by pre-Reformation, Erasmian ideas, most of the friars dis-




tanced themselves from the popular aspects of Iberian Christianity, such as religious images, pilgrimages, and miracles. They conceived of the image exclusively as an instrument for inspiring devotion toward what it represented and what it was believed to actually be in heaven. A mnemonic device, the image of Mary, for example, was employed solely as a reminder that she was the mother of Christ and that she had become the great mediatrix of heaven, while the cross was used to illustrate the classical dichotomy between signified and signifier, between the image and what it represented. The image was merely the "semblance" of an original, the copy of a celestial model. As Hubert Damisch (1972) has observed, the Renaissance concept of the image was strongly influenced by the phonetic model of language and sign.

In short, the Franciscans employed the image didactically, using it to

propagate Christianity as a tabula rasa that permitted no compromise with Indian paganism. The "new man" who was thus to be created had to break with his pagan past. Therefore, it was necessary to prevent the cult of images from inspiring idolatrous excesses or from inducing confusion in the Indian mind. Whether the Franciscan image was considered a mirror, a memory, or a living representation (i.e., in the context of living theatre [see Horcasitas 1979]), it was conceived exclusively for an Indian audience whom the friars tried to protect from the disastrous influence of the conquistadores and European colonists. The Indians were given a "moral eye" with which, aided by faith and free will, to learn and master the Christian image in order to evade the lies of the devil and the snares of idolatry.

The Baroque Image By the mid-sixteenth century, New Spain (i.e., colonial Mexico) was no longer the land of the conquest. Once the population had been pacified and superficially Christianized, the Catholic Church began to impose a new image policy. In the second half of the century, three major changes-religious, technical, and social-laid the ground for the emergence of the Baroque image.

While the rural Indians living under the influence of the friars were quickly disappearing, decimated by a series of epidemics, a new society was evolving-urban, Hispanicized, and constituted by different races and cultures, all of which were experiencing the multiple processes of mestizaje. The secularized Catholic hierarchy-bishops and archbishops-became more powerful as the mendicant orders lost their influence. This evolution brought about a change in the Christianity- as-tabula-rasa policy. Instead of enhancing Mexico's break with its pre-Columbian past, the Church aimed for a double end: (1) to create the necessary conditions for a progressive transition into the colonial present, and (2) to facilitate better relations among the different




racial and ethnic groups in New Spain (Spaniards, blacks, mestizos, and Indians). Thus, all of these groups were encouraged to share the same beliefs and practices. The second archbishop of Mexico, Alonso de Montufar, initiated a policy that involved both a social project and a religious strategy.

Acting along the same lines as the Tridentine Council, the Mexi- can Church fostered a Christianity that was more open to traditional

practices, such as cults of the Virgin and the saints as well as many Iberian devotions. The space left by the old pagan idols was to be filled with Christian saints and images, subject to the approval of a secularized clergy who systematically took advantage of apparent miracles and prodigies in order to impress and Christianize the Indian masses. In this context, a new image policy was conceived and implemented in order to exploit all of this instrument's potential. The first Mexican Council, the viceroy, and a corporation of Mexico's painters jointly determined the conditions under which Christian images would be manufactured and sold. As early as 1571, the Inquisition began to oversee these matters and to prosecute abuses and deviant practices. During this same period, religious texts (such as handwritten and printed versions of the Holy Scriptures) which had been used by Indian readers were banned and confiscated. The Mexican Church

preferred to foster cults of those images produced under its aegis rather than encourage the use of texts that might promote error or

heresy. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the technical and

material conditions necessary for implementing this new image policy were met. While the Franciscans had mainly depended on Indian-

produced images, the new ones were to be made by European hands.

Enough painters had emigrated from the Old World by 1557 to form an organization and submit their statutes of incorporation to the vice-

roy. Several generations of painters had already established themselves in New Spain, including such famous artists as Simon Pereyns, Alonso

Vasquez, and Baltasar de Echave Orio, who were closely associated with the introduction of Mannerism in colonial Mexico (Toussaint 1982). As painters grew more and more numerous, the production of Mexican art increased greatly and was characterized by one con-

stant, salient feature: almost exclusively religious themes. The realite

campagnarde et populaire that was to be found in the Spanish paintings by Murillo or Zurbaran was completely lacking in Mexican art. The Mannerist image, like the later Baroque image, was conventional and

strictly standardized: imitation and conformity were to be the rule (see Baticle 1986).

Therefore, the success of an ecclesiastical strategy and the growth of an artistic milieu, as well as an increasingly Creole and hybrid popu-




lation, made a new image policy possible. From 1550 to 1650, the colonial Baroque image gradually became entrenched. This process was never merely one of implementing a theoretical program, but was the result of complex, evolving forces that were described only sporadically and partially in the historical accounts (Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda 1982: 36-142).

The Virgin of Guadalupe The rise of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe illustrates the process by which the Baroque image emerged. The Informaci6n por el serm6n de 1556, the scattered references in Indian chronicles, and, much later, the 1646 book by Miguel Sanchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria, are all sources that, though incomplete, are rich enough to reveal the extreme complexity of an evolving creation that always went beyond the mere visual translation of an aesthetic, political, and religious discourse. To study this process, we must trace the comminglings of art history and institutional history, of social history and cultural history.

First, we must recall several facts. At the very beginning of the cult, there was just a hermitage, built in the 1530s by the first missionaries on the Tepeyac hill that was the site of a pre-Hispanic shrine, nearly ten kilometers north of Mexico City. Indians living nearby visited the site, maintaining a pre-Columbian tradition. In the 1550s, Spaniards began coming to the shrine to worship an apparently new image that had been recently introduced there, a painting of the Virgin, Our Lady of Guadalupe (named after the Spanish Virgin in Estremadura). But on September 8, 1556, a Franciscan friar delivered a sermon de- nouncing the new cult, which created a scandal. According to the friar (and confirmed by an investigation made immediately after his sermon), the new image had been surreptitiously installed in the Tepe- yac shrine. Indian chronicles contain apparently supporting evidence, having recorded for 1555 or 1556 an apparition of the Virgin on the Tepeyac hill, although without specifying whether what was seen was a vision or a painted image of the Virgin. Archbishop Montufar, alleged the friar, had commissioned from an Indian painter named Marcos a Virgin, to be based on a European model, and then had had the painting secretly placed in the hermitage. Its surreptitious installation lent the image an aura of mystery that became one of miracle when the prelate not only acknowledged the prodigies associated with the painting, but even attributed the origin of the cult to Christ himself. The initiative proved successful, as Spanish pilgrims came in greater and greater numbers to the Tepeyac hill (see Torre Vilar and Navarro de Anda 1982: 309-34).

Montufar's church readily exploited the impact of the image on popular worship and lay piety. The archbishop fostered the Tepeyac




cult, claiming it to be one that the Indians should support. He hoped they would invoke the intercession of the Virgin as the Spaniards- "people from the city" and "ladies of quality"-already did. The cult's adherents claimed that it was responsible for encouraging Christian customs and discouraging games and forbidden pleasures. Of course, Montufar was already familiar with the Granada experiment, that is, with the effort to integrate the recently Christianized Morisque population, before his appointment to the Mexican see. Thus he was not at all opposed to the spread of popular Iberian practices, and it is possible that he had become more receptive to (or at least more tolerant of) hybrid forms of devotion.

The Tepeyac hill had long attracted the Indians. Before the Spanish conquest, it had been the site of a shrine dedicated to the mother of the gods, Toci, where offerings and sacrifices were made. Later, the Indians made it a shrine to their new, Christianized goddess, whom

they called Tonatzin, Our Mother, the name they had once used for Toci. As things turned out, it was almost as if the archbishop had

deliberately taken advantage of the felicitous juxtaposition and super- imposition of the old and new cults. I do not mean to imply that Mon- tufar conceived and promoted a conscious or systematic appropriation of these expressions of Indian paganism; the prelate's aim was not to

bring the different cultures into closer alignment with each other, but to foster and facilitate the homogenization of colonial populations via divine intercessors chosen by the Church and to attract the Indians to the rites of the Catholic liturgy practiced in the new cathedrals and

parish churches. Nevertheless, the array of religious, technical, and social conditions

I have briefly described in order to set the scene for the emergence of the Baroque image and the spread of a new image policy does not

adequately explain the fate of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe; nor does Montufar's risky initiative, which aroused the opposition of the Franciscan friars. From 1556 until 1646, the Virgin of Guada-

lupe maintained a more discrete, even secret existence. For almost 100 years, the image eluded the control of its first sponsors before

reappearing in the mid-seventeenth century in the writings of a secularized priest, the bachiller (garrulous) Miguel Sanchez.

In the meantime, while the mestizo and Creole populations maintained their devotion to the image, Indian accounts of the apparition were spreading through the valleys of Mexico. It is possible that they referred to Indians or to such legendary figures as the first bishop and

archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga. It is also possible that they took liberties with the European chronology as did the later Titulos

primordiales-the false land titles written by the Indians in the seventeenth century to describe the origins of their pueblos according to a




cyclical concept of time (Gruzinski 1988: 139-88). It is also very likely that the data on the apparition came from art and from oral and written sources. That is, Indian songs (cantos) could have celebrated the miracle (or miracles) of the image; pictographic codices painted by local caciques (Indian chiefs) could have preserved a glyphic version; and, according to aJesuit historian, annales could have included a written record of the wonder. Whatever the case, these accounts had been collected and transcribed in a manuscript known as the Nican Mopo- hua, the compiler or author of which may have been a mestizo chroni- cler named Fernando de Alva Ixtlilx6chitl, who collected codices and Indian manuscripts and was in touch with the intelligentsia of Mexico City. It would have been easy for him to share these manuscripts with Spanish priests who were looking for information about the Virgin of Guadalupe. Moreover, the Indian memory and imaginaire could have absorbed such visual evidence as ex-votos (votive offerings) and frescoes like the one that still adorned the refectory of the convent of Cuautitlan in 1666. Alternatively, according to several sources, in the early years of the seventeenth century oral accounts of the Virgin's miraculous appearance were going around in the Spanish milieux. In any case, these accounts-whether Spanish or not-became well- known only after the publication of Sanchez's book.

In fact, Sanchez launched a comeback for the image, ending a long period in which the Tepeyac Virgin had inspired only limited popular devotion and such accounts and interpretations as were beyond the control of the Church. Therefore, it must be stressed that when the image returned to the center of the ecclesiastical stage, from 1646 on, it did not do so as the culmination and ideological ratification of a well- rooted religious practice. On the contrary, the hagiographic efforts of Sanchez and his colleagues, Lasso de la Vega and Becerra Tanco, were made when devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe was declining and the memory of her miraculous appearance was fading (see Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda 1982: 152-333). This context is important. Conditions were such that a new tradition could be created, one that capitalized on the uncertainties and blanks, the rumors and un- substantiated reports-a tradition as indisputable as it was perfectly designed and wholly focused on the story of the miraculous image. To briefly summarize the legend published by Sanchez, which would persist as the official Mexican version up to the present, the Virgin appeared three times in 1531 to an Indian called Juan Diego, who visited Bishop Zumarraga in order to tell him about these apparitions. When Juan Diego opened his mantle, where he had kept the flowers he had gathered, the Indian discovered that an image of the Virgin had been miraculously imprinted on the cloth, an image that "is nowadays kept and worshipped in her shrine of Guadalupe."




Sanchez's intervention-the revival of the Tepeyac Virgin-is a

complex phenomenon that must be placed in its social and political context. This cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe was launched in a Creole, academic milieu where it became identified with Mexican

"patriotism" (in the seventeenth-century meaning of the word), a kind of proto-nationalism grounded on the incomparable mystery that en- shrouded the image of the Virgin: nonfecit taliter onni nationi (Brading 1973). But with respect to the image itself, Sanchez's promotional initiative had several stages. First, the revival of the image proceeded from the writing and publishing of a book, which served in New

Spain-and in Spain-as a way of appropriating, establishing, and au-

thenticating the miraculous event. By endowing the image with the

authority of his book, Sanchez satisfied one of the requirements established by Baroque exegetes and eruditos, that is, the close connection between image and commentary, the necessary link between the text and the painting that was a mainstay of Mannerism and the Baroque mentality. At the same time, Sanchez realized perfectly well that he was acting as a divulgateur, producing "a public story" in order "to re- vive the devotion of the tepid and to foster it again among those who live without knowing the mysterious origin of this heavenly portrait" (Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda 1982: 288).

One of Sanchez's concerns was the definition of a perfect image, whether it be considered a copy, a beauty (hermosura), or a divine apparition. The sophistication of this exegete was such that he could endow the Tepeyac image with qualities and properties that we would now associate with the technical achievements of photography, the comput- erized image, and the three-dimensional hologram (see Queau 1986). In other respects, Sanchez used the image to construct and convey, or to impose and affirm, a new temporality. On the one hand, he related it to the Patmos vision by claiming that the Virgin of Guadalupe was a

replica of the Woman of the Apocalypse, who appeared to St. John on the Greek island. On the other hand, by establishing 1531 as the year of the Mexican apparitions, he contextualized the Virgin of Guada-

lupe in an era that predated Bishop Montufar's (scandalous) initiative of the 1550s. Following the publication of Sanchez's book, then, the

question of the surreptitious installation of the image in the Tepe- yac shrine became irrelevant, at worst an embarrassing memory. The

legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe could be perfectly accommodated within the perspective of the Apocalypse revelations and, therefore,

tightly connected to the miraculous tradition of the Church. Thanks to the image, the temporality of the new imaginaire inaugurated by Sanchez was objectified and became crystallized. Thanks to this image, America-the New World-could be connected to the Christian Era.

Thus, in this respect, the Guadalupe image served as a marker or

starting point in the perspective of Christian and Western history.




Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that Sanchez's book was published almost a century after the 1556 affair, by which time the image had already inspired forms of devotion that were well-documented in oral and written tradition. It was almost as though, early on or even from the beginning, the cultural process of mobilization and syn- cretism operated directly by means of the image, instead of through the respective discourses and policies. Montufar's initiative, for example, was a wholly silent intervention. As far as we know, the archbishop merely took advantage of an opportunity to execute and dis- creetly install a painting of the Virgin. In the same way, the image could be said to have indicated the path that would subsequently, and only much later in the texts by Sanchez and many others, be made explicit and legitimate. The imaginaire that was grafted onto the Guadalupe image invariably anticipated both conceptual formulations and the literary productions in which they were expressed, exempting these texts from the rigidity, pressures, and limitations that characterized other colonial Mexican literature. The imaginaire demonstrated a potential that the orthodox discourse could never have ventured to propose. For instance, although the image's syncretic potential was demonstrated as early as the mid-sixteenth century, it wasn't until the eighteenth century that a published work (by the apologist Cabrera y Quintero [1746] speculated about a possible connection between this Mexican cult and certain North American Indian myths.

In the same way, the prodigious reputation of the image lent credi- bility to the accounts of apparitions of the Virgin, while oral and written testimony alone would never have gotten past the censors of the Inquisition. The Guadalupe image, like any other image, induced effects that went far beyond the aims and objectives of its original cre- ators (Bishop Montufar and the Indian painter, Marcos) and continually eluded the many mediators and intermediaries who subsequently endeavored to control and manipulate it.

"Territorialization" and Consensus

By being used to reshape chronology, the miraculous image had tem- poral effects, but these were related to its spatial effects: that is, the insertion of the image into a physical environment was never casual or incidental. The Guadalupe image was linked to the Tepeyac hill, "a rough, stony and uncultivated" site where the Virgin asked that a shrine be built. The "mariophanies" and, later, the image which appeared on Juan Diego's mantle launched and materialized God's physical invasion of a pagan space that had once been dedicated to heathen cults. The hill thus became concretely occupied by means of an image which was itself, according to the theologians, the "form of God." The extirpation of the devil-which amounted to a "desacraliza- tion" of the pagan space in the manner of the "decontamination" pro-




moted by Cortes (by which such places were purified before Christian

images were installed)-anticipated an immediate and corresponding "resacralization" effected by the image. In the case of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the impact of this "territorialization" was virtually un- limited because the preachers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies wanted not only to replicate European cults in America, but also to establish unequivocally the New World's superiority to the Old and, more specifically, Mexico's superiority to heaven. Thus they preached that the Virgin of Guadalupe preferred to leave heaven and settle per- manently on the Tepeyac hill: "She brought all of Heaven with her to be born again with it in Mexico City" (Maza 1982: 162).

Insofar as they represented and multiplied points of sacralization, did the many Baroque images that appeared in colonial Mexico effect a kind of compromise between Christian monotheism and Indian poly- theism? This question is not easy to answer. Although it is obvious that, through their cumulative power, these images were spreading the idea of the holy, at the same time they were reducing it to a uniform, standardized frame of reference defined by an intangible orthodoxy. Images were to be found everywhere in Baroque Mexico, imposing their anthropomorphic canons and establishing a visual and represen- tational order grounded, in principle, on the relationship between the

copy and the model. In spite of the proliferation that gave them a

polytheistic look, or perhaps because this proliferation was kept under control by the Church, the Mexican images contributed to the more

global project of circumscribing and confining the holy. They were used to define and classify the different sectors of reality: on one level, the holy was concentrated in the image-reliquary, the miraculous apparition, and the edifying vision; on another level, the holy became associated with the dull, meaningless, and desacralized spaces of the

profane and the superstitious. The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, like many others, was sup-

posed to concentrate and focus an expectancy and a belief, to polarize an imaginaire that was still divided on the Indians' part among Chris- tian devotions, the rivers and mountains, the small idols they bought at the marketplace, and the sacred bundles they hid under their household altars. The Baroque image was thus much more than an agent of sacralization. It assumed the function of a common denominator for the many groups and milieux that composed colonial Mexican

society and thereby reduced the heterogeneity of a world that had been fragmented and weakened by ethnic, linguistic, social, and cultural differences. The image was expressly said to be a vinculo, that

is, a piece of property entailed in perpetuity, and thus constituted an unbreakable bond among all of the faithful in a diocese and in the

viceroyalty.




It did not matter that the prodigy happened in an Indian milieu. Rumors of the miracle quickly spread among mestizo and Spanish groups as well. Laity and clergy, men and women, pilgrims and miraculously healed people came from all sectors of colonial society. Una- nimity prevailed over the fates of these cults: the highest authorities, including the viceroys and their wives, would visit the shrines, kneel before the images, make magnificent offerings, and sponsor religious feasts; the images inspired dedications and consecrations, beatifica- tions and canonizations, processions and coronations of images, autos- da-fe, and so on, attracting huge gatherings engaged in spectacular acts of allegiance, which proved to be essential in this kind of society. It must be recalled that, with no army and no adversary against whom the people could be rallied, the colonial administration had few means of mobilization and intervention at its disposal. A compensating factor, however, was that Indians, mestizos, and Spaniards alike could move freely throughout the viceroyalty in order to collect money, say, for an image of the Virgin (or of a saint), thereby strengthening the net of collective piety that united the population. Thus the miraculous image played a great role in unifying and homogenizing colonial society and its commingled cultures, mixing processions and official ceremonies with an inexhaustible series of popular entertainments and Indian dances, such as "the monster dances and masks adorned with many costumes as we are accustomed to in Spain" (Careri 1976: 114).

Images and the Baroque Imaginaire The Baroque position, as expressed by its armies of painters, sculp- tors, theologians, exegetes, and inquisitors, was different from that of the friars, in that there was no longer any desire to impose an exotic visual order, such as the Franciscans strived to do. After this first, preliminary stage had been completed, the image's other kinds of potential were to be exploited. The new, Baroque policy empha- sized the special relationship between image and prototype, by which I mean the presence of the model within the replica: "'I am in the images, I am present in my images,' said the Virgin." The objectives too had changed, with the Baroque image appealing to everybody. The "image war" that the friars had waged against the Indians shifted: from the seventeenth century on, it was waged within colonial society and pitted the dominant groups-Spanish, Creole, and Indian authorities-against the overwhelming majority of the Mexican population. Once an instrument for Christianization, the image became a means of unification, a social common denominator. One must wonder how an image associated with fictitious prototypes in equally fictitious frames could have exerted such influence upon the individual and the society. It was as though the image, in diverting attention to the fic-




tion, became more efficacious. As a matter of fact, this very efficacy seems to have depended on the image-induced diversion. The Spanish chroniclers were aware of this process, although they acknowledged it only when the image was a demonic one, "a deceitful and wicked mask" for duplicity, fraud, and alienation.

This process of diversion, or shifting attention from the reality of

daily life toward another reality, operated independently of the image, emanating from the discourse of Baroque theologians and exegetes, so it cannot be explained by an analysis focused exclusively on the image. On the contrary, its apprehension entails the mediation of an imaginaire, whose existence and influence we have already noted. It is true that this imaginaire sustained "a chronic hallucinatory state" and created "marvelous effects and mutations," insofar as the Church always took advantage of visions, dreams, and other "special effects" in order to foster the cult of images. Ecclesiastical writers endlessly registered miracles and prodigies such that there were no chronicles without a

chapter dedicated to this matter. Nevertheless, the Baroque imaginaire cannot be reduced to this dimension because it would mean that the culture of this era was no more than a sort of "waking dream." In

fact, the expectancies, intellectual grids, and many of the features that characterized and delimited the Baroque imaginaire proved to be the

products of constant interference by individuals, groups, societies, and institutions. Deeply rooted in these social and institutional contexts, the Baroque imaginaire transcended and obscured the boundaries

that, according to our modern, positivist view of the world, separate objective reality from dream and hallucination.

This imaginaire worked in an autonomous way, operating on the basis of its own temporality and its own regulatory mechanisms, such as fetishism (e.g., denying the historical origins posited in Sanchez's

book), censorship and even self-censorship, and delimitation of the

profane and the sacred. The Baroque imaginaire was also the product of a mindset that always expected miracles to occur, for images were the ultimate (sometimes the only) protection and remedy against the illnesses and natural disasters which repeatedly struck the Mexi- can population. This means that the study of the Baroque apparatus will yield only limited insights about the imaginaire if it neglects the intervention of the spectator and user of the image.

The Consumers of Images Far beyond Montufar's expectations, colonial Mexico became a society invaded and permeated by images that were almost exclusively reli-

gious ones. To all appearances, countless relays of shrines and chapels, streets and houses, crossroads and lanes as well as numerous items of

jewelry and clothing sported such images. Even those who might have




been less open to Christian images-the Indians-possessed "a mul- tiplicity of effigies of Christ Our Lord, of His Holy Mother and of the saints." The campaign by the Church was so successful, in fact, that the priests were often obliged to moderate the omnipresence of the image, drawing increasingly firm distinctions between legitimate and deviant uses of it.

Instead of emphasizing this process by which the Church colonized daily life, however, my focus here will be on how the different groups in colonial society took possession of the image. This appropriation occurred along a continuum that comprised so many steps and such tiny degrees of differentiation that sometimes errors were made or abuses were perpetrated unwittingly. It was also often difficult to distinguish a clumsy or rough copy from a deliberate forgery or an authentic expression of spontaneous piety. Images became objects of cults that the Church did not and could not ratify. Visionaries and swindlers alike went about with statues and paintings whose miraculous origins they promoted. Hybrid, heterodox, and clandestine images appeared here and there. From the seventeenth century on, for instance, the cult of death has remained popular, with effigies found in many household shrines. Some images were merely products of mistaken interpretations of a divine mystery (e.g., the Holy Trinity), while others were simply expressions of the need to make visible what eluded the grasp of the mind.

Beyond merely saturating the environment, Baroque images laid claim to the body via such signs of physical appropriations as tattooing and body painting. Any boundary between the body and the image could be demonstrably abolished on the white, red, or black skin of the inhabitants of New Spain. Thus, the chest of an Indian could become a virtual "flesh retable" on which was painted the Christ of Chalma with St. Michael and Our Lady of Dolores. Would it be possible, then, to consider such Baroque bodies the corporeal culmination, or human analogue, of the great shrines? Given the ease with which we can now speak of virtual bodies, thanks to the new technologies of computer- ized images and electronic communication, perhaps it is not unrea- sonable to stress the peculiar link that has often connected the body and the image (see Abruzzeze 1988).

Regardless of the form it took, the image's weight and the impact of its presence made it an interlocutor: if not a person, at least a power with which one could negotiate or bargain and on which one could exert all kinds of pressures and passions. The expectation that acted as an impetus to the imaginaire appealed to this imagistic presence much more than to its material medium. Images were threatened and black- mailed, as if they could be forced to meet the demands of their owner. (Needless to say, iconoclasm will invariably be found in any society that




gives the image such a decisive role.) They were also insulted, flogged, scratched, slapped, burned with a candle, broken, torn, stamped on, stabbed, pierced, cut into strips with scissors, tied to horses' tails, and covered with red paint or even human excrement. Such were the many expressions of a sadism which seemed safe because the victim was only an object, making it less dangerous to insult than a human

being. All of this sadism provoked a reactive iconoclasm, which was

perceived by the individual as an aggression against the group because it threatened to become more than a transient or localized rejection of a sacred representation. Baroque iconoclasm had the effect of a short circuit, manifested as the sudden questioning and undermining of the imaginaire by the faithful, who then abandoned their unful- filled expectations and denounced the saint as impotent. Apart from its specific impact, this aggression against a divine figure effaced the more general social and institutional networks of the image, namely, the Church, tradition, the family, and the community, hence iconoclasm's power as a subversive gesture that could serve many purposes. Nevertheless, Mexican iconoclasm never meant the negation of God. Moreover, insofar as it remained an isolated and minority reaction in colonial society, the iconoclastic gesture actually helped to reinforce the sacral aura of the image instead of reducing it to a static, obsolete mode. Iconoclasm amounted to a negative expression of the ideal re-

lationship to the image. It defined-dramatically-the boundaries of the imaginaire relative to the image. Therefore, one can understand

why the iconoclastic gesture was often followed by one of personal or collective resacralization, as numerous Inquisition cases in the Mexican Archivo General de la Nacion testify.

Images and Visions

During the 1680s, in a Michoacan pueblo called Tarimbaro, images moved and saints came down from the retables to speak with the faithful. A Spanish woman called Petrona Rangel, who lived with her sisters in a milieu composed of Indians, mestizos, blacks, and whites, would

give "the rose of St. Rose," that is, peyorl (an alkaloid), to her customers and patients, so they could see "how St. Rose would come out of the small painting she had on her altar and speak to them and cure them"

(Archivo General de la Naci6n). The saint had revealed to Petrona where lost or stolen things would be found, as well as remedies that could cure diseases. The Blessed Virgin had also been in touch with the "witch."

The case was typical of Baroque Mexico, when the consumption of hallucinogens was a common practice. As early as the end of the sixteenth century, it had spread beyond the Indian groups for whom it had been a custom since pre-Hispanic times. The drinking or eating




of herbs took place before the household altar, under the eyes of the Virgin, Christ, and the saints, to whom homage was paid by those who took part in the ceremony, usually mestizos, Indians, or mulattos. In this context, images became more than benevolent, efficacious presences since they played leading roles in hallucinatory experiments. By appearing to a healer (curandero) or petitioner, by moving and inter- acting, dressed in the same garments and accessories that they wore as statues and in paintings, the Virgin and saints seemed to reproduce the prodigies that were being attributed to other Baroque images elsewhere. These representations thus became all the more credible and plausible because the boundary between daily life and the supernatural had simply collapsed. Life and hallucination were constantly getting mixed up and conflated.

This new conquest by the Baroque image turned out to be quite ambiguous. On the one hand, it strongly influenced the hallucinations of whites, blacks, mestizos, and even Indians, for it Christianized the traditional content of the visions induced by the hallucinogenic cac- tus and mushrooms. On the other hand, these practices were pursued outside the Catholic orthodoxy; the resulting images could not be controlled by the Church, which denounced them, but neither were they subject to consumer control, insofar as a biochemical element was responsible for the visions in which they appeared. Again, it seems, the phenomenon cannot be analyzed solely in terms of formal influences or images. On the contrary, one must emphasize the role and historical consistency of the individual and collective imaginaire and assume that the hallucination was one of its driving forces. In this respect, Mexican society proved to be much more prone to hallucinations than Baroque Italy was, as the historian Piero Camporesi described it in his Pane selvagglo. The Mexican hallucination was less the product of poor nutrition (which was the case in Italy) than of the cumulative effects of hallucinogens ingested daily over long periods under the guidance of healers and "witches." While the miraculous image exerted a powerful influence over the whole population, the relatively circumscribed but scarcely clandestine universe of the Mexican visionaries and drug consumers constituted an imagistic consensus thanks to hallucinogens.

The Mexican vision created strong links between the production of images and the bodily consumption of various substances. The con- suming of plants paralleled the drinking of alcohol during the feasts of the saints, as both practices were ritualized and sacralized. As a colonial practice, inducing hallucinations had its roots in a pre-Hispanic tradition, but it also mimicked the Eucharist. It involved an imaginaire in relation to a body that absorbed scents (copal), light (candles), music, and drugs. The same Baroque body which was tattooed with the image of the Virgin could experiment with the ecstasy of an ortho-




dox vision or, kneeling in prayer, perceive miraculous images in the darkness of the shrines.

The Indians and the Image Like other topics here, this one is too complex to be analyzed even

briefly in a paper (see Gruzinski 1990). In my Colonisation de l'imaginaire (Gruzinski 1988), I tried to show the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indians mastered writing and the Western

image in order to adapt to colonial rule and create new identities for themselves. One can observe in the codices and on Indian maps many combinations of alphabetic writing and pictographs, Renaissance land-

scapes and pre-Columbian symbols. They illustrate the discoveries and difficulties of Indian figurative thought in confrontation with West- ern European acculturation and the aesthetics of Western art. In the same way, the confrontation between the Indian use of color and the monochromatic images of European prints reveals how Indian artists absorbed and adapted themselves to a new visual order. As a matter of fact, the successive reactions of the Mexican world to the Christian

image displayed great diversity, ranging from receptivity and imitation to interpretation, appropriation, and iconoclasm on the part of Mexico's colonial Indians.

The Baroque image had been an important means for integrat- ing the Indians into colonial society, and later into the mestizo world. While the influence of Baroque devotional practices involving miraculous Virgins, shrines, feasts, pilgrimages, as well as the impact of individual expressions of piety, the proliferation of images, and the links between cult imagery and visionary imagery, has been amply demonstrated, the role of Indian and mestizo brotherhoods-official and informal-in spreading the cult of the saints, or santos, is also

noteworthy. In connection with the saints, a hybrid imagery emerged and developed during the seventeenth century. Its inventiveness and

plasticity played a great part in the birth of new Indian identities, which were a synthesis of the pre-Hispanic patrimony, the pressures of colonial society, and the influence of Mediterranean Christianity, the forms and schemas of which were reproduced by Indians in the towns (pueblos) and the cities (see Ouwenell and Miller 1991). At the same time, the Indians shared the Baroque image with other groups comprising Mexican society, insofar as it constituted a common patrimony, however liable to different, contrasting interpretations, as well as a common focus for many imaginaires.

By studying the many ways that the Indians interpreted and reinter-

preted Christian images, one can apprehend some of the mechanisms and cultural processes related to the mestizaje. First of all, we must

emphasize the role of the linguistic and cultural misunderstandings




caused by the missionaries. As we now know, at the very beginning of Mexico's evangelization, a double confusion obscured the correct understanding of the Christian image by the Indians. In describing the images of the saints in Nahuatl-the language of the Nahua Indi- ans in the Mexican highlands-the missionaries used the term ixiptla, which led the Indians to apply the Amerindian concept of a god and his many expressions (which "ixiptla" implied) to the Christian statues and paintings (see L6pez Austin 1973). This misunderstanding, which confounded the ambiguities of translation with those of visual interpretation, bred other confusions in terms of religious practice. The systematic substitution of images of the Virgin and the saints for pagan statues and idols, as well as the Christian crosses being erected everywhere, which recalled other crosses of the pre-Hispanic past, made comparisons, associations, and false equivalences all too easy, thus provoking a chronic state of interference in the Indian imaginaires.

The coexistence and physical proximity of these disparate images had other effects as well. Local shrines housed a mixture of representations related to Christian iconography, such as paintings and statues made by local artisans along with bad prints or renderings vaguely inspired by European models, and other cult objects. Such hetero- geneous and ill-assorted collections included objects that had been inherited, donated, or found, some of which were so old that they were completely defaced, as well as numerous small statues, "toys," stones, and "bundles." The Indian imaginaire seemed to reproduce, mingle, or scatter divine forces and presences everywhere. "Idolizing" the old as well as the new, the Indian tended to worship or transform into amulets mere things (cosas) that were just as likely to have been inherited from tradition, handed down by custom, or simply bought in the marketplace. The original features of such objects ultimately lost their significance as the colonial period progressed and the memory of the past faded, since neither of the two universes-Christian or "idolatrous"-had ever been impermeable (see Gruzinski 1988: 189- 238).

Even anthropomorphism proved useless as a criterion. The identifi- cation of the fire god with St. Joseph provides an interesting example. Because of the physical likeness between the saint and the Nahua god, which the Indians could deduce from sermons and the images of St. Joseph they saw, a peculiar link was forged between the Virgin's elderly husband and the old man who represented Huehueteotl, the Nahua fire god. Later on, in shifting from the figurative sphere to a more abstract symbolism, the Indians maintained this link, identify- ing the saint with fire itself. Accordingly, "the fire was St. Joseph and when the wood was green or wet, when it was smoking a lot and weep-




ing while it was burning, they said that St. Joseph was angry and that he wanted to eat" (Archivo General de la Nacion).

Lacking this degree of abstraction or dematerialization, the work- manship of many santos made by Indian craftsmen was so rough and rudimentary that they ended up looking like "dolls and figures or other ridiculous things." To the critical eyes of the priests, these holy images did not really look Christian, seeming to be more represen- tative of idols, or just "things." However, these images were actually products of beliefs and daily practices which led the Indians to pair and group objects that became completely transformed by the hazards of history, the imaginations of craftsmen, and the imperfections of re- production. Moreover, some mestizos and even Spaniards ventured to ask these idols for what the saints had failed to give them, behaving exactly like those who, for similar reasons, opted to worship the devil. The spheres of the idol and the saint intersected one another and continually overlapped, in spite of barriers that the Church considered insuperable and despite the conceptual gaps that separated these worldviews and cosmologies.

The confusion of references was all the more effective because the Indians, as well as the Spanish and mestizos, believed that, far from being incompatible, the different cosmologies were susceptible to many compromises and practical arrangements. The Indian imaginaire proved to be open to the old and the new, to be quite capable of

adopting or eschewing the images and schemas with which the Mexi- can Church tried to trap it. The Indian imaginaire could embrace the

Baroque imaginaire, becoming inspired by it and even reproducing it, as easily as it could break away from it. The delirium induced by hallu-

cinogens played a decisive role in this plasticity. Thanks to such drugs, it was possible not only to see God and the saints, but to make them

appear at one's will by abolishing the distinction between a copy and its original. The immediacy of the supernatural, which the Church re- stricted exclusively to the images and miraculous events or traditions it had accepted and ratified, could be experienced anywhere and by anyone, given the drugs and a few pennies to pay a healer. Perhaps the surprising survival of hallucinogens in Mexico under Spanish rule can be explained by the new role that the vision would henceforth

play for the Indians: insofar as their eyes could no longer see the world of the past, with its pagan decors, idols, and liturgies, the hal-

lucinogenic vision provided them with an inner, subjective sight that was all the more coveted because it remained invisible and thus could not be easily eradicated by the ecclesiastical authorities (see Sallmann, Gruzinski, Fioraventi, and Salazar 1991).

Through visions and analogies, confusions and confrontations, the

imaginaire of the idol could contaminate and interfere with the imagi-




naire of the saint. Not only was the colonial Church unable to prevent these interferences, but it was generally unaware of what was hap- pening, even under the eyes of its clergy. It is difficult to say whether the Church's attitude was due to an assumption that these deviations were meaningless or to the clergy's inability to understand the extent to which the Indians had taken possession of the Christian image and deformed it. It would be an exaggeration to say that the great Ba- roque wave nearly drowned the Church that had caused it. On the contrary, it is possible that in the long run these heterodox eruptions were instrumental in firmly establishing the dominance of the Baroque model.

Nevertheless, the disturbances and excesses that can be documented prove that nothing is weaker than the dominion of the image. They call attention to processes of acculturation that not only use material images and modes of representation, but also dreams, hallucinatory experiences, and "things" or objects. At the margins of language and writing, there exists a complex sphere that remains to be explored, even though the historical sources, which are mostly written ones, provide only an indirect approach (see Guidieri 1987; Bernand and Gruzinski 1988: 146-91).

Bodies and the Baroque Imaginaire There were many Indian imaginaires, just as there were many and diverse uses of Christian images and many ethnic groups and social milieux in New Spain. Besides the Indians, other people, such as Span- iards and mestizos, sought the protection of miraculous images. In the sugar mills (trapiches) of the hot regions, the number of which increased in the seventeenth century, the same scenarios were to be found among mulattos and black slaves. For instance, a black woman devoted to Our Lady spoke with an image who visited her in her hut. The image, which had been observed to sweat by the slaves, ended up becoming the patroness of the mill. Like the Indians, the slaves celebrated such miraculous transformations with dances, saraos (soirees), and banquets (see Beltran 1972). The image could serve as a rallying point around which a hamlet could be formed in order to evade the domination of the mill owners or the hacendados (landowners). As in the Indian communities, the image helped the slaves to express an identity and achieve solidarity. In doing so, it functioned as a political instrument. We must not forget the role of the image in the context of the silver mines in the northern deserts or in the obrajes (textile fac- tories), which were both jails and workshops for the poor, exploited workers. Even these workers rallied around a patron saint, whose feast day was celebrated with a modest procession, some food and drinks.

One could go on and on, of course, with endless descriptions of Ba-




roque images, shifting from Indians to blacks, from blacks to mestizos, from mestizos to "poor whites," and from the feast day celebrations in the cities to the syncretic practices in the mountains and the deserts. Then one would realize how much the imaginaires overlapped. Think of those Jesuits who suddenly took over the dull space of the obraje to organize a feast day celebration, or of those Sierra Indians who established new cults of the Virgin, as illustrated by the numerous events recorded during the second half of the eighteenth century in the mountains of the state of Pueble. Everywhere, such initiatives and expectations related to images commingled or collided with each other. Individual and collective imaginaires superimposed the textures and interpretations of their images in response to incessant oscillations between mass consumption and numerous personal and collective interventions, between extremely elaborate forms (e.g., the arcs of triumph built to welcome arriving viceroys and archbishops) and more intel- ligible expressions (e.g., the accounts of apparitions of the Virgin). Underlying this array of forms and images, one may discern an intense need or desire to close the distance between men and their myths, between human society and the divine. The Baroque image would provide one of the most effective expressions of this force, which I would call sacralization, much as today's images (electronic and other- wise) seem to be playing a great role in breaking down the barriers between life and fiction.

In the Baroque imaginaire, many initiatives converged: ecclesiastical strategies confronted consumer responses in a context that capitalized on the power of the image, particularly its polysemy, which accommodated hybrid forms, and on the powerful collective experiences it

engendered among the faithful. This imaginaire integrated forms of collective sensibility that went far beyond the social and cultural barriers typically enforced between visual experiences of very different origins. It comprised a number of prodigious images imported from Europe that were then miraculously discovered, copied, or reinvented by the Indians, torn to pieces by some and restored by others. It would seem that a majority of the colonial Mexican groups, even the most marginal, were able to share this imaginaire to some degree. Perhaps this explains why the Baroque society of New Spain was more successful than others in neutralizing its dissidents, such as witches, syncretic shamans, visionaries, millenarian leaders, and followers of new cults, who repeatedly attempted to reproduce the Guadalupe schema elsewhere, albeit with considerably less success. One must relate the efficacy of the Baroque imaginaire to the sacralization it fostered: the

appearance of the Virgin on the Tepeyac hill in relation to the syncretic millenarianism rampant in the Indian countryside. Given this context, the only threat that could have undermined this universe




was "disenchantment," that is, the triumph of the profane over the sacred. In colonial Mexico, such disenchantment was due to the im-

pact of the Enlightenment and the enlightened despotism imposed by the Bourbons, but, however insidious, it was nevertheless controllable (Gruzinski 1985).

Finally, it would seem that the imaginaire (or better, the imaginaires) cannot be analyzed except in relation to the body. On the one hand, it is obvious that the biological mestizajes cannot be dissociated from the cultural ones; on the other hand, what close examination of the image reveals is the constant presence of the body, its inextricable links to the Baroque image and to the imaginaire. The Baroque body, seeking physical contact with the image, wore scapulars, jewels, ornaments, and clothing covered with religious figures. Through its visions, as well as its tattoos and body paintings, it became impregnated with

images. Sometimes this physical relationship was even consummated

during hallucinations in which Spanish and mestizo witches experienced sexual intercourse with holy images.

In conclusion, I would like to stress that a historical anthropology of mestizajes could benefit from the combined study of bodies and imaginaires. These are two key categories, perhaps essential ones for better understanding our contemporary world, which, somewhat like colonial Mexican society, appears to be increasingly characterized by a commingling and confusion of beings, forms, and practices.

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Images and cultural mestizaje

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