Presented by: David Carrasco
When: 8:00 – 9:00 am Section 2: Regions & Functions of Texts Continued; Panel 4, 4B
Abstract: Gazing for the first time at the dramatic, colorful, and complex indigenous painting known as the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 (MC2) leaves viewers with feelings of admiration and mystery about its narrative of the place of origins, the city of changes and native ways of depicting Spanish intrusions. This extraordinary testament of cultural history and religious memory was created by native Mesoamerican artists from the altepetl or community of Cuauhtinchan, the “Place of the Eagle’s Nest,” who now lived in a “conquered” territory, harassed by Spanish officials, laid low by foreign diseases but who continued to reassert their ancient rights to the land even as they affirm a new hybrid religious world view. My work explores the pictorial narrative of the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan #2, its ancient odyssey, diverse ceremonial landscapes, capital city and indigenous ways of depicting their conflicts and negotiations with diverse ethnic groups.
David Carrasco (Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America) is a Mexican American historian of religions with particular interest in Mesoamerican cities as symbols, and the Mexican-American borderlands. His studies with historians of religions at the University of Chicago inspired him to work on the question, “where is your sacred place,” on the challenges of postcolonial ethnography and theory, and on the practices and symbolic nature of ritual violence in comparative perspective. Working with Mexican archaeologists, he has carried out research in the excavations and archives associated with the sites of Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan resulting in Religions of Mesoamerica, City of Sacrifice, and Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire. An award-winning teacher, he has participated in spirited debates at Harvard with Cornel West and Samuel Huntington on the topics of race, culture, and religion in the Americas.
His work has included a special emphasis on the religious dimensions of Latino experience: mestizaje, the myth of Aztlan, transculturation, and La Virgen de Guadalupe. He is co-producer of the film Alambrista: The Director’s Cut, which puts a human face on the life and struggles of undocumented Mexican farm workers in the United States, and he edited Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press). He is editor-in-chief of the award-winning three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. His most recent publication is a new abridgement of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s memoir of the conquest of Mexico, History of the Conquest of New Spain (University of New Mexico Press).