Nothing in the experience of the much-traveled soldiers of Hernán Cortés’s invading army could have prepared them for what they saw when they marched into Tenochtitlán, the ancient site of present-day Mexico City, in 1519. They encountered great buildings and ceremonial centers, vast and beautiful floating gardens, splendid murals, impressive sculptures and other works of art, and large and well-organized markets. The Spaniards were witnessing the splendors of one of the greatest civilizations in history. Their amazement was magnified by the fact that this civilization was so utterly foreign and unexpected. The Spaniards were denizens of the Old World, where diverse cultures had interacted and influenced one another for thousands of years. But here was a civilization that had evolved in isolation from the rest of the world and yet was highly advanced in astronomy and agriculture, had created architectural wonders, practiced sophisticated types of surgery, and developed complex and unique systems of religious belief and social organization.
This unprecedented and extraordinary encounter of two diverse cultures was destined to have catastrophic consequences for the people of the Americas. In less than two centuries diseases like smallpox and diphtheria, which the inhabitants of the New World had no defenses against because of their genetic isolation, decimated approximately two-thirds of the population of the Americas. In Mesoamerica (a region covering the southern two-thirds of Mexico and Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, and certain areas of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica), tens of millions of native people died either in battles with the technologically superior invading army or, more commonly, as the result of infection with these new diseases. The Spaniards eventually conquered the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, plundered it for its gold and silver (melting many pieces of jewelry and religious figurines into gold bullion), and enslaved many of its inhabitants.
But there was another kind of destruction that the Spaniards were to wreak on the Aztecs and other people of Mesoamerica—the almost wholesale destruction of their culture. The social, religious, and political organization of early Mesoamerican society—including the structure of its large urban centers, forms of religious ritual, cultural customs, artistic styles, philosophy of education, and architectural forms—were all based on a religious and cosmological perspective that was completely foreign and incomprehensible to the Europeans.
The worldview of the Spaniards was determined by their Christian beliefs, and hence they were at once amazed and repulsed by what they saw: human sacrifices, rituals involving bloodletting, adoration of pagan gods, cannibalism, sculptures of what they considered monstrous creatures, and so on. According to their Christian metaphysical perspective there was a clear and straightforward way to categorize these practices; they were to be considered evil and the work of the Devil. One of the most famous chroniclers of the native culture, the Spanish Franciscan priest Bernardino de Sahagun, firmly believed that the existence of Aztec religious beliefs and customs was an ingenious and elaborate manifestation of the power of Satan’s influence. Thus, the religious practices of the Aztecs not only had no claim to cultural legitimacy, they had to be stopped at whatever cost. Bolstered by such ethical and cultural chauvinism, the Spaniards undertook what is perhaps the most extensive and systematic (and certainly the most large-scale) destruction of a civilization in the world’s history. In that the civilizations of Mesoamerica were essentially grounded in a radically different religious and cosmological vision, this conquest was nothing less than an attempt at metaphysical annihilation, that is, an attempt to destroy the worldviews of the native people. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of the Spaniards to eradicate the cosmological roots of these cultures, we shall see that some important features of the ancient worldviews can still be found in some contemporary Mesoamerican cultures.
Given their imperialistic orientations and the closed nature of their religious perspective, it was perhaps inevitable that the Spaniards would fail so completely to understand the Aztec culture and the other cultures of ancient Mesoamerica. In fact, it is only in the latter half of the twentieth century that it has been possible, through a variety of archaeological sources and different kinds of interpretive techniques, to understand the religious and metaphysical worldview of early Mesoamerican cultures.1
This chapter will present a systematic exposition of some of the central concepts and principles of the early Mesoamerican cosmological perspectives, concentrating on the Aztec and Mayan cultures.2 An analysis of these two cultures will provide us with a fairly good understanding of the general structure of the cosmological vision that predominated in ancient Mesoamerica. I will then briefly discuss the philosophical worldview of the ancient South American culture of the Incas, and compare it to the Aztec and Mayan worldviews. In addition, I will draw contrasts and comparisons between the Mesoamerican metaphysical perspectives and some perspectives that have been of predominant importance in the Western philosophical tradition. These comparisons will help us to appreciate more fully the uniqueness and depth of the ancient Mesoamerican worldviews and will further our understanding of some of the Western European philosophical perspectives by placing them within a wider global cultural context.
Cultures throughout history have developed a variety of answers to certain fundamental and perennial questions: What place do human beings have in the universe? What is the structure of the cosmos? How can we explain or account for the origin of the world? The cultures of Mesoamerica developed complex and fascinating answers to such questions. In order to provide a general understanding of how they approached these questions, we will look first at some central metaphysical principles common to the Mayan and Aztec cosmologies, and then examine the structure of each of these worldviews in more detail.
One of the most striking features of the Mesoamerican metaphysical perspective was the remarkable degree to which it interconnected or integrated different aspects or components of reality. Four different kinds of integration characterized its cosmology: (1) the internal structural interconnection of the different components of the universe, (2) the integration of fundamental dualities that were perceived as complementary instead of oppositional, (3) the holistic integration of astronomical science and religious beliefs, and, most important, (4) the integration of everyday life with the cycles and rhythms of the cosmos through the practice of rituals that were perceived as necessary for sustaining the very existence of the universe. To arrive at a unified view of the Mesoamerican metaphysical perspective, we must understand each of these four aspects of Mesoamerican cosmology. This will also help us to situate such practices as human sacrifice and ritual bloodletting in their proper cultural context.
The people of Mesoamerica believed that the universe consisted of three different planes or levels: a celestial plane, a terrestrial plane, and an underworld plane. There were further divisions within the celestial and underworld levels. (The Aztecs, for example, believed that there were thirteen celestial levels and nine underworld levels.) There was also a constant interaction of supernatural forces or powers among these levels, which was made possible by the existence of spiral-shaped channels called mallinalis. These supernatural forces were thought to enter the terrestrial level through caves, sunlight, fire, and animals.3 Some of the rituals of the Mesoamerican cultures were designed to tap and redirect or harness these supernatural cosmic forces. Thus their universe was not a static universe, but rather an interactive one, with three dynamic levels of reality.
Time itself also existed at different planes or levels: human or terrestrial time; the time of myth; and the transcendent time in which the gods dwelled. Terrestrial time originated in the interaction of cosmic forces from the celestial and underworld levels converging at the terrestrial level. In other words, human time originated in the interaction of forces from two distinct spatial planes.
Myth time existed prior to terrestrial time, and in it the actions of the gods, as they were depicted in their myths, took place. For example, in one of the Mayan myths about death, two heroic twin brothers descend to the underworld to challenge the Lords of Death. After a long series of trials and ordeals, the brothers defeat the Lords of the Underworld and emerge victorious. This myth is an expression of the Mayan belief that death represents a challenge which, through courage and fortitude, can be overcome. It was also during this myth time, which still progresses and has not ceased to be, that many supernatural beings who exert cyclical influences on humans at the terrestrial level were born or created.
In transcendent time lived the most powerful gods at the apex of the divine hierarchy who created and grounded the universe. (Apparently these powerful creator gods existed in two temporal dimensions, namely, mythic and transcendent time.) The gods and supernatural beings that inhabited transcendent time, like those that lived in mythic time, had periodic or cyclical influences on the events and beings that existed in terrestrial time.4 The early Mesoamerican calendars marked the occasions during the year when these periodic influences occurred.
Thus, in the Mesoamerican worldview, space and time were not understood as existing independently of one another; instead, they formed a complex, unified whole. (When we analyze the cosmology of the Aztecs we will see more clearly the centrality of the notion that space/time is a unified whole.) For the ancient Mesoamericans, the world was replete with cosmic forces resulting from the intersection of the various spatial and temporal levels that comprised the universe.
In addition, their universe did not consist of isolated, discrete entities; rather, it consisted of entities, events, and forces that were in constant interaction with one another and that existed in different spatiotemporal planes. Absolute space, conceived as an empty vacuum in which entities exist and events take place, and absolute time, understood as an infinite linear progression of moments, had no reality in the Mesoamerican cosmological perspective. For the people of early Mesoamerica, space and time constituted the very fabric of existence; that is, they affected, shaped, and determined everything that exists. This is why Mesoamerican cultures were so preoccupied with developing accurate calendars and astronomical techniques for measuring time, determining the spatial location of celestial bodies, and anticipating the occurrence of astronomical events. The capacity to measure and predict the solar, lunar, planetary, and astral cycles enabled them to understand the various complex cosmic forces that they believed affected human events at the terrestrial level. By knowing the particular times at which certain cosmic forces affected events at the human level, they tried to mediate and channel these forces through rituals. From such observations we can appreciate the great extent to which the different components of the Mesoamerican universe were interrelated and interconnected with one another.
The second kind of integration in Mesoamerican cosmology concerns the complementary nature of fundamental dualities. Dualities such as life/death, celestial world/underworld, male/female, night/day, and so forth were of central importance in the Mesoamerican worldview. These dualities were not conceived as being oppositional in nature; instead, they were understood as being different and necessary aspects of reality. One of the clearest examples of this type of nonoppositional duality was the supreme dual god of the Aztecs, Ometeotl. This supreme deity, who was the ultimate originator of all that exists, had a dual male and female nature. Ometeotl was sometimes called Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl, which means “lord and lady of our maintenance,” and often he/she was referred to as “our mother, our father.”5 The dual nature of Ometeotl enabled him/her to beget other beings and the universe from his/her own essence. It is clear that the Aztecs wanted to incorporate both the male and the female principle within a single supreme entity and that they saw no contradiction in a deity who was simultaneously male and female.
It is interesting and instructive to compare the conception of a male/female dual god with the monotheistic God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Traditionally, the Christian god has been characterized primarily as having male qualities and has been referred to in explicitly male terms. For example, the first two substantive terms in the expression “the father, the son, and the holy ghost” refer to God in terms that are unequivocally male, while the third substantive term, “the holy ghost,” has traditionally never been spoken of in female terms. And historically, rarely if ever have we heard the Christian God referred to by the female pronoun “she” or by the phrase “holy mother.” He is usually characterized by predominantly male qualities that emphasized his power and authority instead of, say, his nurturance and unconditional acceptance. Some contemporary theologians have argued that these gender-specific characterizations of the Christian God deny women full spiritual participation in the Christian religious tradition. In any case, we can see that the Aztec conceptualization of the supreme deity Ometeotl incorporates the two aspects of the male/female duality into a single divine entity.
We find another case of the Mesoamerican tendency to think in terms of nonoppositional dualities in the Mayan understanding of the life/death duality. From the Mayan perspective, death, whether of humans or of plants, was an integral part of a never-ending life cycle of birth, death, and regeneration. Death was not seen as the discontinuity of life, but rather as a necessary phase in the regeneration of life. Upon death, humans went to the underworld of Xibalba, where they experienced various ordeals and struggles with the supernatural entities of the underworld. Then they would be reborn and ascend to the celestial or terrestrial level, where they might become a part of a heavenly body, an ancestral spiritual entity, or a maize plant.6 Through this transformation and process of rebirth, individuals would be integrated into one of the eternal life cycles of the universe. In similar fashion, the death of plant life in the seasonal and agricultural cycles was merely one phase in the recurring pattern of sowing, sprouting, dying, and regenerating. One of the central ideas in the Mayan cosmology was that the earth was a living entity that was continually in the process of regeneration, and that the death of plant life was an integral part of this process.
In short, death was not seen as the negation, or as the polar opposite, of life. Rather, death was a process that either (1) made possible the continuation of the life process or (2) allowed for the integration of the life of the individual into the eternal cosmic cycles. In the plant world, the death of plants enabled new vegetation to sprout and develop; that is, death was an integral part of the process of regeneration. In the human realm, death was, as we have seen, a process in which the individual would eventually become a part of the astral or earthly cycles of the universe. In contrast to some Western views on death, in which the soul of the individual continues to exist in an otherworldly spiritual realm, in the early Mesoamerican cosmology the spirits of the dead return to become a part of the world we can see, touch, and feel. That is, they became part of the world of everyday experience.
The third kind of structural integration that characterizes the Mesoamerican cosmology concerns the intimate linkage between Mesoamerican scientific and religious perspectives. Astronomy was by far the most fully developed science of the cultures of Mesoamerica. The accuracy of their calendars equaled or surpassed those of other cultures in the world at that time, and their astronomical observations were as extensive and accurate as those of any other civilization. Insofar as they possessed a scientific, empirically validated form of knowledge, it was their astronomy. This was the knowledge that allowed them to correctly predict celestial events, carry out extensive and accurate calendrical computations (some of which involved dates many millions of years into the future), and measure agricultural cycles. But their astronomical science was also closely interconnected with their religious ideas and beliefs, especially the fundamentally important concept of the renewal or regeneration of agricultural and human life cycles. They believed that the influences of the supernatural forces and beings that permeated the earth and supported these life cycles could be tracked and predicted by their calendars. In addition, they maintained that through religious rituals they could harness and successfully mediate these cosmic forces.
Thus, the intense interest of the people of ancient Mesoamerica in astronomical observation and the measurement of time was not motivated merely by the desire to acquire knowledge for its own sake; the continuation of the life cycles of the universe depended on the performance of the appropriate religious rituals at specific points in time. Their scientifically validated observations were united with their fundamental religious ideas and with the rituals they believed were crucial for the continued existence of the cosmos. This unification of their two most basic kinds of knowledge gave rise to a holistic conceptual unity in their thinking that is difficult for us to understand and appreciate. The reason this conceptual integration is so foreign to us is that there is a fundamental fragmentation in modern thought between scientific knowledge and religious belief.
Science tells us that reality consists of physical entities and forces that exist independently of human consciousness and that are utterly indifferent to the human search for meaning and cosmic significance. According to the contemporary scientific worldview, everything that occurs in the universe is explainable in terms of universal physical laws, not in terms of the acts of a divine will. Because according to this worldview it is physics, and not the will of God, that explains why events occur, modern scientific knowledge conflicts with the age-old reliance on a supernatural, spiritual being to explain what happens in the universe. And if, as the modern scientific perspective tells us, reality consists exclusively of impersonal physical forces and entities governed by universal laws, where in such a universe can we find a basis for human spiritual meaning and significance? This scientific perspective has also deeply influenced nonreligious, philosophical attempts to find a basis for the meaning of human existence. For the past several centuries (a period coinciding with the emergence of modern science and the decline of the religious worldview), Western philosophers have wrestled with questions concerning the meaning of life. Here again the problem has been to find a basis for grounding existential significance and human values in an indifferent, impersonal universe consisting solely of objective physical forces and entities. In short, a basic dilemma has arisen in modern Western thought as a result of the scientific view of the universe as an objectively existing physical realm in which there is no room for the principles of human subjective experience as expressed in religious and philosophic thought. By contrast, in the Mesoamerican cosmological view there was no conflict between science and religion; on the contrary, Mesoamerican scientific and religious worldviews complemented and reinforced one another.
We have already alluded to the fourth kind of integration characteristic of the Mesoamerican metaphysical perspective. It concerns the belief that religious rituals were of central importance for maintaining the existence of the cosmos. Perhaps the clearest expression of this belief can be found in the Aztec Legend of the Four Suns. According to this legend, there have been four ages that have been dominated by four different suns. Each of these ages—which correspond to each of the four directions, east, south, west, and north—had ended in a catastrophic manner with the destruction of the human race and the world. The Aztecs believed that they lived in the age of the Fifth Sun, which was created at Tenochtitlán, the ancient site of Mexico City, as the result of the self-sacrifice of the gods Nanahuatzin and Tecuciztecatl. After the destruction of the Fourth Sun, all was darkness except for the divine hearth (the teotexcalli ), where the gods gathered to create the new sun that would usher in the new age. The gods ordered Tecuciztecatl to leap into the great fire, but he was unable to do so out of fear. After Tecuciztecatl attempted and failed four times to leap into the fire, the gods ordered Nanahuatzin to sacrifice himself in the giant blaze. Nanahuatzin braced himself, closed his eyes, and threw himself in. Upon seeing this, Tecuciztecatl finally gained enough courage to jump into the fire. As the result of his courage and sacrifice, Nanahuatzin reemerges from the east as the new, blazing red sun.7
The Legend of the Suns expresses some central ideas of the Aztec cosmology. One of these is the centrality of cataclysmic change in the evolution of the universe. Each of the previous four ages had been destroyed by sudden, catastrophic disasters and the present age was also susceptible to an abrupt, massive destruction. The Aztec universe was thus highly unstable and vulnerable to extinction. Another prominent theme in this myth is that of sacrifice. The Aztecs believed that the present age began with a sacrifice by the gods, and that in order to prevent this age from ending they had continually to provide the sun with life-sustaining blood and with the energy concentrated in certain parts of the body of sacrificial victims. This is the primary explanation for the religious rituals involving human sacrifice.
The need for sacrificial victims demanded the continued capture of enemy warriors and the creation of a warrior class to satisfy this need. This sense of cosmic responsibility reinforced certain authoritarian orientations in Aztec culture. Theirs was a society that did not tolerate a great deal of individual freedom or challenges to the established social order.
Human actions had great significance in the cosmology of the Aztecs, because the very existence of the universe depended on the proper performance of religious rituals, including human sacrifice. Without a doubt, most of us would find the practice of human sacrifice, and the extent to which it was practiced by the Aztecs, to be morally objectionable and repugnant in the extreme. Nevertheless, this practice was based on a religious doctrine that was of central importance in the Aztec cosmological perspective. Within their worldview, human sacrifice was not only justified, it was absolutely essential. Indeed, the profound sense of cosmic responsibility that was so central to the Aztec worldview was a double-edged sword. It provided them with an unquestioned faith in their relevance and importance as a people, but it also burdened them with the heavy obligation of maintaining the existence of the cosmos. It can truly be said that the Aztecs elaborated a highly imaginative, though severe, answer to the question concerning the role and relevance of human existence in the universe.
One way to begin a description of the world of the Maya is by discussing the sacred nature of Mayan kings. They were more than just high personages at the top of the social and political hierarchy of Mayan society. Kings were considered the axis mundi of the Mayan world; that is, they were regarded as living centers of divine powers and as links between the gods and humans. Their function as mediators between the worlds of the sacred and the mundane was most clearly expressed in a religious ritual that in Mayan society was closely associated with kingship: bloodletting. This practice involved the piercing and bleeding of various parts of the body during rituals. This ritualistic form was practiced on important occasions such as marriage ceremonies, political events, crucial points of transition in the calendar, and so on. As we shall see, through this religious ritual Mayan kings would use their bodies as conduits for mediating between the world of the gods and the world of mortals. The purpose of this practice was to invoke the spiritual presence of gods and ancestors, to direct and reinforce their influence on worldly events, and to renew the existence of, and even create, deities.
Many cultures throughout the world have employed a variety of means for inducing altered states of consciousness in which contact is made with supernatural beings, divine forces, or alternative realities. The Huichol people of northwestern Mexico use the peyote cactus to induce religious visions, while the Zapotecs in Oaxaca use hallucinogenic mushrooms for similar purposes. Buddhists and Hindus in India use fasting and meditation to attain higher states of awareness. The Mayan kings used a combination of fasting and bloodletting in order to attain such states of consciousness and to call forth the gods into the dimension of human space and time. It is a medical fact that the loss of blood can induce altered states of awareness, including hallucinations. The practice of fasting, which in itself can also lead to such states, probably reinforced the hallucinatory effect of the bloodletting.
The Mayan kings, sometimes accompanied by their wives, would usually perform the bloodletting ritual in an elaborate public ceremony. Typically, the king might use a stingray spine or a lancet made of obsidian (a hard volcanic rock) to lacerate his penis while the wife punctured her tongue with a thorned rope. They would let the blood soak onto a special piece of sacrificial paper made from bark and would then burn the blood-saturated paper. Then they gazed into the dark smoke produced by the burning paper in order to see the form of a deity or of one of their ancestors take shape. We can easily see that the preparatory fast combined with the effects of the loss of blood would have a powerful effect on what they experienced at that moment. During this important religious ceremony the Mayan kings would fulfill their function as spiritual intermediaries between the sacred and the human realms.8
As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the bloodletting ritual was to bring the gods and ancestors into being in the dimension of human space and time. By doing this the Mayan kings believed that they would reinforce or strengthen the existence of the gods and would show that they stood in the sacred relationship of reciprocity with their gods. The concept of reciprocity is important for understanding the relationship between people and gods in the Mayan world. The Mayan gods did not exist independently of humans; they relied on the spiritual sustenance that they received from the religious rituals of the people. Because the gods had struggled and sacrificed to create the world, it was incumbent upon humans to nourish and sustain the gods through the sacrificial ritual of bloodletting. By shedding their blood the Mayan kings would show their willingness to reciprocate the sacrifice that the gods had endured to bring the world into existence.
The bloodletting rituals that the gods themselves engaged in are further illustrations of the relation of reciprocity holding between the gods and mortal beings. The following scene of divine bloodletting is depicted on an intricately carved Mayan pot.
The Sun God, the deity having the vision, sits in the center of the scene holding in each arm a Vision Serpent; they fold out from him as mirrored opposites, meeting head to head on the other side of the pot. The serpent in the God’s right arm spits out the sun; its tail is night. . . . The serpent on the left belches forth his realized vision—the watery deep of the Underworld . . . The world of the day is contrasted with the watery Underworld; they are the two opposite halves that make up the universe. The actor is a god; his sacrifice of blood creates a mirrored vision, and from that vision are created day and night, birds of the sky, the waters of the primordial sea in which the world floats, the plants of the earth, death, and sacrifice. The god’s bloodletting vision is thus the whole cosmos.9
This scene suggests that the creation of the universe came about through a ritual sacrifice by the gods. Thus we can see that the bloodletting ritual was an expression of the mutual existential dependence that united gods and kings (and, by extension, all humans) in a fundamental cosmic bond. This cosmic bond was cemented by means of the kings’ very life essence—their own human blood. Bloodletting was the ultimate expression of the Mayan loyalty to and faith in their gods.
Once again, it is instructive to compare the Mayan conception of the relationship between human beings and the gods with the conception of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Christian God is typically characterized as all-powerful and existentially independent, that is, not dependent on any other entity (including human beings) for its existence. Even though both the Christian God and the Mayan gods are described as having a caring and loving relationship with humans, the existential dependence of the Mayan gods on people expresses a conception of the divine that is profoundly different from that of the Christian tradition. This mutual existential dependence and reciprocity constitute an indication of the great extent to which the Mayan people participated in the divine and offer another example of the high degree of holistic integration that characterized the metaphysical perspectives of the people of Mesoamerica. For the Maya the gods were beings whose existence could be reinforced and made tangible through the religious ritual of bloodletting.
The need to renew the existence of the gods through ritual bloodletting brings us to another central theme in Mayan thought, namely, the necessity of religious rituals for regenerating or renewing the earth. The Mayans had what we might call an ecological culture, that is, a culture whose basic metaphysical perspective reflected the idea of the cyclical regeneration of the earth. Their agricultural orientation was manifested in several ways. First, they were an agriculturally advanced culture: They built canal systems for crop irrigation, practiced slope-field and raised-field farming, and cultivated corn, squash, beans, cotton, cacao, chili peppers, and other crops. Second, they recognized that the cultivation of maize and other crops had made possible the development of the permanent communities where the temples and pyramids that were important to the evolution of their culture and religion were built. Third, their rituals and their dominant metaphors indicated that they were intimately in tune with the seasonal and agricultural cycles of their rich vegetative environment.
The predominance of the ecological orientation in the Mayan world can be seen in the rich symbolism of the “cosmic tree.” The cosmic tree is a symbol, used by many cultures throughout the world, of the earth as a fertile, living totality. In the Mayan culture this tree represents the earth as a living entity capable of periodic regeneration. Thus, according to the traditions of the present-day Tzutujil Mayas, the earth (and all that it contains) is seen as a tree or a maize plant that periodically sprouts, blossoms, dies, and is regenerated.10 The significance of this metaphor in which the world is seen as a biological unit is twofold: First, there is recognition of the fact that just as there is an interconnection between the different parts of a plant, so there is an interconnection between the different biological units of the earth; second, there is the conviction that just as plants need nurturance from the sun, the soil, and water in order to live, so there is corresponding need for the world to be nurtured and renewed in order for it to continue to exist. This renewal was achieved by religious rituals performed at specific times as determined by the temporal cycles that were measured by Mayan calendars.11 It is interesting to note here that the Mayan view of the earth as a regenerating biological unit is remarkably similar to the modern-day “Gaia hypothesis,” which states that the earth consists of many complex, interacting ecological systems. Some biologists and ecologists have argued that by adopting this view of the earth we will be more aware of the need to maintain and protect the earth’s own ecological balance.
One of the implications of the Mayan view of the earth is that because nature does not belong to human beings, they do not have the right to do with it as they please. Nature is not something to be “mastered” and controlled for human purposes. In the Mayan perspective people do not stand against nature, but are rather an integral part of it. Humans should take care of nature and nurture it, because they depend on the earth for their nourishment and survival, and because, as biological entities that are born, reproduce, and die, humans are also part of the natural life cycles that permeate the earth. Even among the contemporary Maya of Guatemala there is still a deep sense of respect for the earth because of the belief that ultimately it belongs to the gods and not to mortal man. People are the caretakers, not the owners, of the earth. This accounts for the traditional belief among members of such communities that it is not correct to partition tracts of land and sell them. The earth should be nurtured and cultivated for the good of the whole community; it is not something to be bought and sold for profit. The ancient Maya believed that it was not possible to buy and sell the earth in that it did not belong to them in the first place. This belief is maintained, though perhaps to a lesser degree, by some contemporary Mayan communities.
By contrast, Western culture has elevated the individual’s right to own private property into a fundamental human right. We see this “right” as so basic that we consider it more important than the right of an individual to have enough to eat or to have adequate shelter. Nevertheless, despite the importance in the Western tradition of the individual right to own private property, it seems plausible to say that, as far as basic individual human rights are concerned, the individual right to have adequate nourishment or shelter is more basic or primary than the individual right to own private property. But perhaps even more important, an analysis of the ecological orientation of the Maya reminds us that it is only recently that Western societies have realized that a fundamental change in our attitude toward nature is necessary to ensure our ecological survival. We have used and abused nature to such an extent—through air pollutants, the use of toxic chemicals, the production of nonbiodegradable materials, and so forth—that we have placed our own survival, and the survival of other people in the world, in jeopardy. Our view of our relationship to the earth is starting to change so that we are beginning to see the world as an integrated ecological system that may be deeply affected by our actions.
One of the central legends of the Maya relates the adventures of two Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who outwitted the Lords of Death of the Underworld of Xibalba. According to the legend, the twins were highly skilled players of a Mayan ball game in which a rubber ball was passed through a ring in order to score points. Their constant play disturbed the Lords of the Underworld, who ordered them to come to Xibalba to play against them. The twins underwent many trials and ordeals in their confrontations with the Lords of Death, but by using their wits they eventually succeeded in overcoming all of the trials imposed by the Lords. For instance, in one of the trials the twins were given a flaming torch and two lit cigars and were told that they had to keep them lit throughout the night and return them unconsumed in the morning. Hunahpu and Xbalanque fooled the Lords of Death by attaching the brightly colored tail feathers of a macaw to the torch and some fireflies to the end of the cigars to give the appearance that they were still lit. In another test the twins were placed in the House of Jaguars, where many hungry jaguars lived. They managed to survive by throwing bones to the jaguars, who then fought for the bones among themselves and forgot about the twins.
At the end of the story the twins perform several tricks before the Lords, like setting a house on fire without destroying it and sacrificing a dog and then reviving it. One of the twins even sacrifices the other and is then able to bring him back to life. The Lords are so impressed with this that they plead with the twins to let them participate in this magical sacrifice. The twins allow the Lords to play the role of the victims in the apparently nonlethal, magical sacrifice. However, the twins really sacrifice the Lords and do not bring them back to life. The twins then warn the Xibalbans that unless they stop trying to harm humans on their journey through the underworld, they too will meet the same fate as their rulers. The victorious Hunahpu and Xbalanque finally leave the underworld of Xibalba and ascend into the sky, where one of them acquires the ownership of the sun and the other the ownership of the moon.12
The legend of the Hero Twins embodies the Mayan conception of death as a journey through the underworld, involving challenges that could be overcome through courage, intelligence, and fortitude. It is a myth that recognizes the natural human fear of facing the unknown, but nevertheless it encouraged the Mayan people to face death with bravery, even boldness. It portrayed death as a transitional phase between life at the terrestrial plane and an eternal life that began upon one’s victorious emergence from the underworld. Just as the sacred sun descended into the underworld every night only to reemerge in blazing glory every morning, so could the human spirit triumph over death and become integrated into the eternal cycles of the cosmos.
As we have observed, one of the central themes of Aztec cosmology was the belief in the inherent metaphysical instability of the universe. Their universe, which was subject to the divine whim of the gods, was susceptible to sudden and cataclysmic extinction. It is within the context of this belief in the instability of the cosmos that we should understand the centrality of human sacrifice in the Aztec world. Aztecs thought they could prevent the annihilation of their world by offering the gods human blood and the vital energies concentrated in certain parts of the body. By means of these ritual sacrifices they would (1) repay the gods some of the life energy the gods had expended in creating the world and (2) strengthen the gods, who were the metaphysical ground of the universe.
But there was another tradition in Aztec culture that provided an alternative to the dominant doctrine based on human sacrifice. In this tradition there was a systematic analysis of issues dealing with the nature of reality and ultimate truth. The Aztecs created centers of higher learning that were the most advanced and egalitarian in Mesoamerica. They developed theories of knowledge in which artistic creativity was regarded as the only true way of attaining insight into the nature of reality. In what follows, we will first discuss the theological-militaristic doctrines of the Aztec culture, and then we will examine the legacy of the Aztec philosophers.
For the Aztecs the human body was the locus of cosmic life forces. Tonalli, teyolia, and ihiyotl were some of the life forces that were concentrated in various parts of the body.
The head (especially in the hair and the fontanel area, the soft spot on an infant’s skull) was filled with tonalli, an animating force or soul that provided vigor and the energy for growth and development. The heart received deposits of teyolia (what gives life to people), which provided emotion, memory, and knowledge to the human. This was the soul that could live and have influence after the body was dead. The liver received ihiyotl, which provided humans with bravery, desire, hatred, love, and happiness.13
These life forces could be acquired or transferred by different means. Thus people could acquire tonalli from the sun, which was one of the primary providers of this kind of life energy, by exposing themselves to its rays. And the tonalli of a community could be increased by collecting the decapitated heads of enemy warriors.
It is not difficult to see that the ritualistic importance of human sacrifice demanded a constant supply of sacrificial victims. Ritual sacrifices occurred at least once a month and more frequently on certain occasions. For example, for the dedication of the Great Temple in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, Aztec priests working in shifts sacrificed between ten thousand and eighty thousand people (the estimate varies according to different sources) during a four-day period. A mythology of war and sacrifice that had evolved in Aztec culture supported the practice of human sacrifice. Native documents historically credit the Aztec political figure Tlacaelel with originating the metaphysical-militaristic philosophy that sustained this practice.
In 1424 the young Aztec nation, led by King Itzcoatl, found itself besieged by the tyrannical Maxtla, leader of Azcapotzalco. Itzcoatl and his advisers had decided to humbly surrender to Maxtla, when Tlacaelel appealed to them to resist and fight instead. Tlacaelel led the Aztec warriors to victory over the forces of Maxtla and as a result gained great influence with King Itzcoatl. Under Tlacaelel’s influence the Aztecs burned their own codices (books of pictures that they used to record important events) and rewrote their history. In this process of mythological revision, the patron god of the Aztecs, the war god Huitzilopochtli, was identified with the sun and thus elevated to the status of a major god. Since Huitzilopochtli was also the god of war, the idea eventually took hold that by his periodical nourishment with the blood of captured enemy warriors, he would maintain the existence of the sun and stave off the end of the present age.14
Tlacaelel’s conception of the new divine militaristic mission of the Aztecs is clearly expressed in his remarks to Motecuhzoma I concerning the dedication of the Great Temple:
Our god need not depend on the occasion of an affront to go to war. Rather, let a convenient market be sought where our god may go with his army to buy victims and people to eat as if he were to go to a nearby place to buy tortillas . . . whenever he wishes or feels like it. And may our people go to this place with their armies to buy their blood, their heads, and with their hearts and lives, those precious stones, jade, and brilliant and splendid wide plumes . . . for the services of the admirable Huitzilopochtli.15
Thus the Aztecs came to accept a religious cosmological vision that had far-ranging social and political consequences. Almost every aspect of Aztec culture, including their economic and social structures, their education, their religions and festivals, was influenced by their metaphysical-militaristic philosophy. A powerful warrior class developed to implement this cosmological vision and it expanded the Aztec empire over large parts of Mesoamerica. Perhaps part of the appeal of this vision to the Aztec rulers was that it facilitated imperialist expansion while simultaneously providing a unified religious view of the divine mission of the Aztec people.
As pointed out earlier, another very different approach to the problem of finding a place in the great scheme of things was also developed by the Aztecs. It is important to understand this approach in order to avoid the facile conclusion that Aztec society was merely concerned with satisfying a collective bloodthirst through military conquest. This orientation challenged the validity of traditional religious doctrines and beliefs and sought to answer certain fundamental questions concerning the nature of truth and reality. The systematic questioning was carried out by Aztec wise men known as tlamatinime. In Nahuatl this word means “knowers of things.” The tlamatinime were not satisfied with the answers given by religious myths to questions concerning the origin of the world, the nature of death and the afterlife, the nature of reality, and so on. They reflected in a systematic way on the difference between myth and reality, truth and illusion, knowledge and opinion.
These systematic reflections occurred in schools of higher learning called calmecacs. The purpose of these schools, which were open to all social classes and not just to the nobility, was to teach the moral codes, history, and arts of Aztec culture and to endow their students with the practical wisdom necessary for correct living. Other functions of these institutions of higher education included the assimilation of the students into the life of the community, the teaching of self-control and moderation in everyday activities, and the dissemination of the highest principles and ideals of Aztec society. Before a male child reached the age of fifteen, his father would decide whether to send him to the calmecac or to the telpochcalli (where he would be taught to be a warrior). It was in the calmecacs, which were educational institutions of central importance to Aztec society, that the tlamatinime proposed and analyzed alternative answers to fundamental questions about human existence. Insofar as the Aztec wise men engaged collectively in critical and rational discourse concerning such basic questions, they exemplified true philosophical reflection and can therefore be categorized as philosophers.
The traditions initiated by the tlamatinime are of particular philosophical interest because they provide an example of the emergence of philosophical discourse in a setting that was intellectually isolated from the rest of the world. Even though philosophical reflection arose in different cultures of the Old World (e.g., the Greek, Indian, and Chinese cultures), at the time at which such philosophical reflections arose none of these cultures had been intellectually isolated for thousands of years. Thus, the reflections of the tlamatinime indicate a genuine second birth of philosophy. It is also important to analyze their conception of the proper way to answer metaphysical questions, that is, questions concerning the ultimate nature of reality. After proposing various ways of achieving well-grounded philosophical knowledge, the tlamatinime, or Aztec philosophers, concluded that it was only through aesthetic and poetic inspiration, and not rational discourse, that one could get a glimpse of ultimate truth. That is, these Aztec philosophers elaborated an aesthetic approach to the acquisition of metaphysical knowledge.
The doctrine that insight into the nature of reality could be achieved through artistic creativity was based on two considerations. First, the tlamatinime were skeptical about the possibility that human beings could attain discursive knowledge regarding the nature of reality. In particular, this skepticism applied to the belief that traditional religious legends and myths could provide genuine knowledge and to the belief that metaphysical insights could be articulated or expressed in rational discourse. Second, the tlamatinime maintained that true insight into the nature of reality could be achieved only by imitating the creative activity of the gods. That is, they believed that through artistic creation, humans could mimic the divine creative actions by which the gods gave rise to the world. Let us examine each of these basic considerations in turn.
In the following poem, one of the Aztec philosophers expresses personal misgivings concerning the capacity of human beings to know ultimate truth and the intentions of the gods.
Perchance, oh Giver of Life, do we really speak?
Even though we may offer the Giver of Life
emeralds and fine ointments,
if with the offering of necklaces you are invoked,
with the strength of the eagle, of the tiger,
it may be that on earth no one speaks the truth.16
This poem conveys the idea that religious traditions and religious offerings may not provide the tlamatinime with true insights into the divine. It expresses their reluctance to rely on the established doctrines for knowing the nature of the sacred. Also of importance is the idea that “on earth no one speaks the truth.” This expressed the doubts of the tlamatinime regarding people’s capacity to articulate the truth through discursive, rational discourse.
In order to understand the view that aesthetic creation provides insight into the nature of reality, let us first consider the following poem.
With flowers you write,
Giver of Life
With songs you give color,
With songs you shade
those who live here on earth.
Later you will erase eagles and tigers.
We exist only in your book
while we are here on the earth.17
One of the central ideas in this poem is that objects in the natural world exist only as painted images or representations on a divine canvas. The reality of these objects is as fleeting as the reality of painted images in a book. God creates the world through a process of divine creative activity, and the reality of the objects in the natural world lies in the models of these objects in the divine mind. But humans can also engage in an activity which is analogous to that of the divine creator, namely, the activity of artistic creation. The human artist can strive to create works that exemplify or capture the original aesthetic divine form of the objects of the world around us. It is futile for human beings to try to penetrate to a reality underlying the world of appearances, because the world in itself consists only of images and appearances. The best we can do is to imitate the divine creative process through the creation of works of art. Only then can we hope to get a glimpse of the divine models and the divine sacred vision that gave rise to the objects in the world.18
Poetry is one of the creative activities through which we can gain some insight into the nature of the real. In Nahuatl the phrase “in xochitl in cuicatl” means “flower and song” and it is a metaphor for poetry or for a poem. This semantical clarification will help us to understand the significance of the following poem, which speaks about the origins of poetic inspiration.
Our priests, I ask of you:
From whence come the flowers that enrapture man?
The songs that intoxicate, the lovely songs?
Only from His home do they come, from the innermost part of heaven,
only from there comes the myriad of flowers . . .
Where the nectar of the flowers is found
the fragrant beauty of the flower is refined . . .
They interlace, they interweave;
among them sings, among them warbles the quetzal bird.19
As stated in this poem, poetic inspiration and insight come from heaven, from the world of the divine. The Aztec philosophers believed that true knowledge, that is, knowledge based on a solid foundation, cannot originate here on earth, but must be based on the insight given by the gods. The knowledge people can acquire through the senses and reason is transitory and unreliable. Poetic intuition is one of the ways in which it is possible to attain true insight into the nature of reality and the sacred. The tlamatinime thought that it was only occasionally, in the experience of aesthetic rapture, that one might come to have a glimpse of ultimate truth.
The view that true knowledge of the divine could be attained through artistic creation such as poetic inspiration challenged, and provided an alternative to, the idea that human sacrifice and warfare were necessary. If the insights provided by religious doctrines were, like all human knowledge, uncertain and unreliable, then how could we know that offering human sacrifices to the gods would ward off the destruction of the present age? Once the general basis of established religious doctrines was undermined, any particular religious belief could be questioned, including the one concerning the necessity of human sacrifice and warfare. The alternative view elaborated by the tlamatinime was that communion with the gods did not occur through the ritual of human sacrifice, but rather through the creation of aesthetic works. Through divine inspiration and artistic creation, the artist could convey the only real truth accessible to human beings.
At the time of the conquest, this aesthetic vision of the acquisition of knowledge existed side by side with the dominant theological-militaristic perspective. We can only speculate as to whether the alternative viewpoint of the tlamatinime, which had been in place for less than a century when the Spaniards arrived, would eventually have undermined, or even replaced, the dominant cosmological vision. The Spaniards burned countless “picture books” on which the Aztecs had recorded their history and their legends and myths. Because the Aztecs did not develop a written language, and because of the destruction of the vast majority of their codices, much of the information that we have concerning the aesthetic perspective on metaphysical knowledge developed by the tlamatinime comes from native writers who were taught by the Spaniards to write shortly after the conquest.
We can now appreciate the complexity and paradoxical character of Aztec culture. It was a culture whose major institutions were deeply influenced by a cosmological perspective of instability, conflict, and warfare. But it was also a culture that gave rise to highly organized and sophisticated forms of education, some of which involved the systematic analysis of philosophical questions concerning the nature of the divine and the nature of ultimate truth. The Aztecs’ intellectual evolution reached the point where they had developed a metaphysical perspective that was an alternative to the dominant viewpoint based on conflict and domination. Aztec society was one in which the periodic ritualistic sacrifice of human beings was accepted as a matter of course; but it was also a society that took great care in the education of its citizens and the rearing of its children. The Aztecs believed in compulsory education for all their children; all boys and girls, whether they were children of the rich or poor, were taught the Aztec legends and traditions, the divine songs, and the proper methods of worshiping their gods. They were also taught to practice the central values of their society, which included self-control, self-knowledge, moderation, and respect for government institutions. These were the aspects of Aztec culture that the Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagun had in mind when he remarked that in certain respects the Aztecs exhibited more signs of virtue and civility than many people in his own country.
The vastness of the Inca empire rivaled that of any other in the history of the world. The empire extended for twenty-five hundred miles and included approximately twelve million people who spoke at least twenty different languages. For an early culture, the Incas achieved extremely high levels of skill in architecture, engineering, ceramics, textiles, and metallurgy. They devised methods for freeze-drying food and developed chemically sophisticated techniques for gilding ornaments and jewelry with very thin layers of precious metals. They built a highway network that covered ten thousand miles and that far surpassed that of the Roman empire or any other nation. Their well-built roads, which extended across raging rivers, enormous mountains, and deep valleys, were equipped with rest stops and lodgings located at regular intervals. Among their engineering marvels were suspension bridges that extended across enormous gorges and fortresses and buildings that consisted of boulders weighing more than a hundred tons. One of their religious buildings measured 307 feet in length and 40 feet in height. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Inca empire was the bureaucratic infrastructure that held together in cooperative unity the different ethnic and cultural groups comprising it.
The Incas had a profound understanding of the psychology of conquest and this understanding enabled them to unify a large number of widely dispersed communities. When they conquered a new group and integrated it into their empire, they respected the local leaders and chieftains and allowed the people to retain their religious rituals and customs. The religious tolerance of the Incas was shown by the fact that the conquered groups could continue to worship their gods; the Incas demanded only that they venerate the Sun as a principal deity. However, the Incas did force these groups to pay tribute to them in the form of labor, food, and raw materials, though the tribute exacted was in proportion to the resources at each group’s disposal. In exchange, the Incas would teach them to cultivate various crops and help them to build roads, permanent shelters, and bridges. In some cases the Incas would even build schools and provide teachers for the newly conquered communities. The Incas would institute a form of agrarian collectivism that rigidly regulated everyday activities but that provided everyone with the basic necessities of life, such as food and shelter. The forms of economic and social organization of the Incas enabled them to amass great amounts of goods, which they stored in enormous warehouses. Their collectivism system, which involved exacting tribute from conquered communities that had undergone economic and social development, benefited both the communities and the central Inca empire. The effect of this enlightened, though ultimately self-interested, philosophy of conquest was that the conquered groups would eventually adopt Inca customs and forms of social organization. The way of life of the Incas, which these communities at first adopted out of fear and through coercion, before long became the accepted way of doing things.
Inca society was basically agrarian, and the religion reflected a concern with the earth and its regenerative cycles and the propitious conditions for attaining successful crops. As in other cultures, Inca concerns and fears influenced their conceptions of the divine, and their gods were made the agents and protectors of their needs and preoccupations.20 The principal god was Pachacamac, who was considered the creator of the earth and the animating force of all living creatures. Pachacamac was an invisible being whose form or shape was not capable of representation; in fact, it was prohibited to represent his form. Another major deity was Viracocha, who created humans and the astral bodies.
The Incas’ most prominent and elaborate temples and their major festivals were devoted to the sun, who was denoted by the name Inti. The sun was looked upon as the deity who determined the destiny of individuals and the community and as the force that provided sustenance for crops and the plant world. The great importance attributed to the sun is understandable in a society that lived in the high altitudes of the Andes, where the earth freezes as the temperature plunges at night after the sun disappears. The moon was denoted by the name Quilla, and she was regarded as the wife and companion of the sun. In addition to these divine entities, the Incas practiced totemism (the belief in animals or natural objects that are related by blood to certain families or clans). Among the most common totems were the condor, the jaguar, the mountain lion, and the serpent. The Incas also venerated a number of objects and places, like rivers, great trees, mountains, the wind, and the earth.21 The orderly functioning of the state religion was maintained by the priests; they kept track of the numerous festivals, rituals, and other observances of the Inca religion. This was an important task, given the complexity and variety of their religious observances. Like the Maya, the Incas had a tradition of divine kingship, in which the Inca rulers claimed descent from divine personages.
The word huacas was applied to a large number of entities, some of which were considered holy or sacred. The term was used to refer to various deities, places of worship like temples or shrines, and sacred places like mountaintops, but it was also used to denote any natural object that was extraordinary in size, shape, or form, like a very large rock or a deep gorge. Even people who were born with unusual traits or under unusual circumstances (like twins or triplets) were considered huacas. It seems unlikely that all of the objects that fell under this rubric were considered sacred or holy, but it is difficult to determine this with certainty. What is clear, however, is that the Incas believed that the gods created each of these unusual or extraordinary objects for a reason and that these objects were thus deserving of special care or veneration. The reasons why the gods created such objects were regarded as mysteries.22 The Incas also held a quasi-Platonic23 doctrine according to which every object had its archetype in heaven, which protected it and looked after its preservation. This archetype was regarded as a patron or “mother” of the objects it protected at the terrestrial level. The Incas did not have a general term for referring exclusively to their gods. They denoted their gods by their proper names, and used the word huacas as an inclusive term for all the kinds of entities just mentioned. Their conception of the divine or sacred included deities, the earth, and natural objects and places under a single category.
The Inca cosmos also had three levels: a heavenly level, a terrestrial level, and an underworld level. As in the Aztec and Mayan cosmologies, the beings in each of these levels interacted and influenced one another. Cosmic forces would flow between the terrestrial and the upper and lower levels through caves, gorges, and rivers. Propitiation of the gods was crucial for the well-being of the community and its members, and rituals were used to favorably direct the forces that affected the crops and the health of individuals and the community. Many aspects of the lives of the Incas were guided by religious belief. Of particular importance was divination, a practice to which they resorted before undertaking any decision of significance. They followed the peculiar practice of examining the entrails of sacrificed llamas for signs determining when and what decisions should be made.
The Inca religious cosmological perspective was similar in certain important respects to that of the Mayas and the Aztecs. The world of the Incas, like that of the latter, was replete with natural forces and powerful beings. The religious rites and rituals of the Inca cosmovision reflected an intimate knowledge of the cycles and forces of nature. That the forces of nature were venerated and granted divine status and that the major religious celebrations centered on the solar cycles attest to the importance the Incas assigned to nature in their agrarian society. Like the Mayas and, to a lesser extent, the Aztecs, the Incas promulgated the notion of divine kingship, that is, the idea that their rulers were direct descendants of sacred beings and were thus mediators between the terrestrial world and the realm of the divine. This notion was no doubt used by the Incas, as it was by the Aztecs, as an ideological justification for the tribute they extracted from the groups they conquered. Nevertheless, the Incas demonstrated a significant degree of religious tolerance, since they allowed these communities to continue to worship their own gods so long as they also venerated the sun god, Inti. But during the Spanish conquest, the Incas and the native cultures of Mesoamerica were to encounter a Christian culture that did not demonstrate such a tolerance for religious pluralism.
It is difficult to imagine the devastating effects of conquest on the people of the New World. During the span of years between 1500 and 1550, it is estimated that 70 million indigenous people died. In Mexico, in terms of the sheer number of members of a particular cultural group who died, the devastation was many times greater than that wrought by the Holocaust. In the year 1500 approximately 25 million people lived in Mesoamerica, but by 1600 only one million were alive. They died as the result of warfare, massacres, fatigue from overwork, and, most important, the new diseases the Spaniards brought with them. The impact of these diseases was magnified by slavery and by the stress and malnutrition caused by the destruction of the social infrastructure (including medical practices) of the native people.24 To give an idea of the economic plundering of Latin America by the Europeans, it will suffice to point out that between 1503 and 1660, 407,000 pounds of gold and 35,200,000 pounds of silver were extracted from the New World. The shipments of silver alone amounted to three times the value of the total European reserves at that time.25
As stated earlier, the conquest of the New World was not only a military and political conquest; it was also a metaphysical conquest. The Spaniards made sure that the religious and cultural doctrines of the indigenous people were systematically vanquished. The Spanish priests knew perfectly well that the cosmological perspective of the native people formed the core of their culture, and that it was necessary to destroy this perspective in order for the conquest to be complete. The monuments, temples, and religious sculptures of the native people were torn down, and in many cases the people were forced to build Christian churches using the stones from their own sacred structures. Their educational, religious, political, and cultural institutions were dismantled, and the native people were enslaved or coerced into performing labor for their conquerors. It was a project of cultural annihilation of unparalleled proportions in world history.
A critical part of the dismantling of the native cultures involved the process of conversion to Christianity. This was not a completely straightforward matter, however, because there were some debates as to whether the native people were truly human, that is, whether they had souls. If they were merely animals closely resembling humans, then there was no point in trying to save their souls by converting them into Christians. Prominent among the Christian friars who maintained that the indigenous people did have souls was Bartolomé de las Casas. He argued that they were not only truly human, but that in terms of their educational and social institutions and their knowledge of astronomy, agriculture, and architecture, they were the equal of any nation in Europe. Those who advocated conversion prevailed, and thus began the process of transforming the cosmological perspectives of the native people into a Christian perspective.
In the area of religion, syncretism refers to the developmental process in which different or originally contradictory beliefs and practices are combined into new religious doctrines or belief systems. The conversion of the indigenous people of the New World to Christianity was not a simple affair in which the ancient religious beliefs completely disappeared while the Christian doctrines were accepted wholeheartedly. Instead, a syncretism between native and Christian beliefs occurred, which gave rise to a new religious perspective that included doctrinal and ritualistic elements of both traditions. The impetus for this syncretistic process often came from the efforts of mestizo (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood) or Indian communities. The reason for this may lie in the fact that members of these communities had a stronger need to find a basis for identifying with the new religion; or perhaps it was an attempt to retain some measure of dignity and cultural solidarity in a situation in which they were politically, economically, and culturally disfranchised.
One of the most prominent cases of syncretism involves the appearance of the Virgen de Guadalupe to a poor Indian named Juan Diego at the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City. The dark-skinned Virgin spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and told him that a shrine should be built on the site of her appearance. When Juan Diego notified the archbishop of his experiences, his story was met with skepticism. But the Virgin appeared to him a second time and instructed him to pick some roses in a nearby area (even though it was not the season when roses could bloom) and take them to the archbishop as proof of her appearance. Juan Diego followed her instructions and placed the roses in his cloak. When he extended his cloak to show the archbishop the roses, both men were amazed to see that the image of the Virgin was miraculously imprinted on it. This incident convinced the archbishop of the truth of Juan Diego’s story, and what is now the most famous basilica in Mexico was built at the bottom of the hill of Tepeyac. Juan Diego’s cloak now hangs on the high altar of the basilica of the Virgen de Guadalupe.
The Virgin’s dark-skinned, Indian features and her use of the Nahuatl language facilitated the Indians’ acceptance of Catholicism by providing them with a means for racial and cultural identification with the new religion. Furthermore, the hill of Tepeyac, where she appeared, was a sacred site at which the Aztec fertility goddess Tonantzin had been worshiped for many years. Another connection between the goddess Tonantzin, who was associated with the moon, and the Virgen de Guadalupe is that the latter appeared standing on a half-crescent, which symbolizes the moon. It is clear that there were some important elements of syncretism between the Aztec’s veneration of the goddess Tonantzin and the new Catholic virgin. Now the Indians had a Christian mother goddess of their own, one to whom they could speak and who was close to their hearts. She had appeared to one of them, and had spoken in their own tongue; she was thus an intermediary between the heavenly Christian God and the native people. The appearance of the Virgen de Guadalupe was a threshold event that signaled the emergence of a new cultural identity based on both Indian and Spanish features but uniquely different from each of these.
In addition to the practice of venerating the Virgen de Guadalupe, there is another important case of religious syncretism that has survived to the present. The Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) rituals, which occur in Mexico and other countries of Mesoamerica at the end of October and beginning of November, also incorporate pre-Columbian and Christian beliefs. In the Day of the Dead ceremonies, people in Mesoamerica perform a number of religious rituals to remember and honor their dead friends and relatives. In some areas, saints and supernatural beings such as the spirits of rivers and mountains are also honored. Some of the rituals center on the home, while other rituals are public affairs that take place at the cemetery and involve the whole community. The careful construction of altars honoring the souls of dead friends and family members is of central importance in the home-centered rituals. These family altars typically consist of (1) religious symbols such as crosses and images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints; (2) various kinds of breads, fruits, candies, liquors, and cooked dishes; (3) particular plants and flowers used especially for the occasion; and (4) objects that were of special significance to the deceased or that he or she enjoyed. Among the unique objects found in these altars are home-baked loaves of bread with crossbone-shaped crusts called pan de muertos (bread of the dead) and small sugar skulls that represent the dead friends and relatives being honored. According to tradition, during the afternoon of October 31 the souls of the dead begin to arrive at their former homes. Because the people believe that the souls of the deceased will best enjoy the offerings of the household altars in the absence of the living, for several hours no one enters the room that contains the altar.
On the evening of November 1, the community gathers at the local cemetery for an important public ceremony in which, according to the people’s beliefs, the souls of the deceased, after enjoying the offerings of the family altars, join the living in a ritual that renews and reinforces the link between the living and the dead. Upon arriving at the cemetery, the people place candles at the previously decorated graves of dead family members and friends and then gather at a designated location. Between one o’clock A.M. and two o’clock A.M., the people pray together and entreat the souls of the dead to shelter them from tragedies and misfortunes and ensure that they enjoy health, happiness, plentiful crops, and success in their worldly endeavors. It is here that we can most clearly see the central ideological principle that underlies the rituals of the Dia de los Muertos, namely, the belief in a covenant between the living and the dead in which the dead are propitiated, remembered, and honored in return for their intervention on behalf of the living. The deceased are seen as beings who act as intermediaries between individuals and the community and the Christian God and pagan supernatural beings. The centrality of this covenant is also corroborated by the importance given to those who died before the age of four. Such infants are seen as angelitos (little angels), whose purity of heart makes them especially effective in mediating between the world of the living and the realm of the supernatural, and special efforts are made to worship them and curry their favor.
The general tenor of the ceremonies of the Day of the Dead is not one of sorrow and lament, but rather one of communal unification, cohesion, and sometimes even celebration. The rituals honoring and remembering the dead not only bring the members of the community together; they also reinforce the belief that death is a transitional phase in which individuals continue to exist in a different plane while maintaining an important relationship with the living. The underlying philosophy of the Day of the Dead rituals goes beyond the notion (which is also a part of Christian ideology) that the souls of the dead continue to exist in a spiritual realm and should be remembered; rather, it contains important elements of a pre-Hispanic cosmology in which the universe is seen as an integrated whole consisting of numerous supernatural and terrestrial beings, existing in different planes, whose actions affect one another in important ways. In this syncretistic Christian and pre-Columbian cosmology, the dead care deeply about the actions and attitudes of the living toward them, while the living depend for their well-being on the willingness of the dead to intercede on their behalf with God, the Virgin Mary, Christ, and the pagan beings associated with the natural elements such as the goddess La Malintzi and the supernatural personage El Cuatlapanga.26 Thus, the observance of the Día de los Muertos, far from representing a morbid obsession with death, is a modern-day expression of an ancient vision of life and death as a seamless web in a metaphysically integrated universe.
In addition to syncretism, there were other ways in which pre-Columbian religious traditions and beliefs were preserved. Even though the Spanish colonizers could easily control public religious practices and institutions, it was much harder for them to monitor and control private religious rituals that occurred in the home and in the fields. Some traditions and rituals were kept secret from the Christian authorities and have survived even to the present. In some cases, there was a correspondence between the Christian symbols and beliefs and some elements of the native religions. For example, the Maya readily accepted the Christian tradition of venerating the cross because in the Mayan cosmology the cross symbolized the cosmic tree. They could thus retain some of their ancient traditions while outwardly appearing to follow the dictates of the Christian authorities.27 The colonizers could force them to adopt their religious practices, but they could not control the subjective significance of their spiritual experiences.
With the arrival of the conquistadores, European philosophical influences also arrived in the New World. Scholasticism, a philosophical and theological tradition based on the works of Aristotle and his commentators, was the dominant philosophical perspective during most of the colonial period. The primary objective of this “official” Christian philosophy was to provide a philosophical, rational defense of Christian doctrines. Scholasticism, like other intellectual movements that influenced Latin America, was thus not an indigenous philosophical perspective. It was the first in a series of movements that were imported from Europe. Scholasticism was an intellectual tradition of the colonizers; it was not influential among the native people of the New World. The only institutionalized, indigenous philosophical tradition of the New World came to an end when the Aztec centers of higher education, the calmecacs, were dismantled and when the codices and traditions of the tlamatinime were destroyed. The social, political, and cultural effects of colonization were so devastating that it would take centuries before the people of Latin America developed philosophical doctrines that reflected their own concerns, needs, and aspirations.
If there is a single great strand that connects the ancient and modern philosophers in Latin America, it is the conviction that philosophy is not a purely conceptual or cerebral activity that can be divorced from other dimensions of human experience. It is not possible to understand the philosophical perspectives that have been influential in Latin America in the twentieth century without understanding the role that colonialism, oppression, and poverty have played in the history of Latin American countries. Philosophical movements in Latin America have been influenced by political developments to a far greater degree than they have been in Europe or the United States. Generally speaking, Latin Americans have not seen philosophy as an intellectual activity detached from the sociopolitical milieu within which it takes place. Whereas in Europe and the United States philosophy has been understood as a theoretical enterprise concerned with proposing and answering questions of universal relevance and validity, in Latin America the relevant philosophical questions have been, for the most part, those which address the concrete sociopolitical and economic problems facing Latin Americans. Given its universalistic orientations, philosophy in the Western tradition has not considered cultural and sociopolitical factors as being of central significance for the philosophical enterprise.28 But the legacy of colonialism and the poverty and political oppression that have been so much a part of the Latin American experience have given the philosophers of these countries a keener awareness of the relevance and importance of such factors.
There are several ways in which colonialism, poverty, and oppression have affected Latin American philosophical thought. First, the experience of colonialism raised the questions of cultural identity and self-determination. The destruction of the indigenous cultures and the imposition of alien religious and philosophical worldviews created dilemmas concerning cultural identity. The mestizos and the indigenous people knew that they were not Spaniards, and that, regardless of their social or economic status, they would never be accepted as such. Historically, the vision of reality of the colonizers had been forcibly imposed on the Indians and the mestizos, and thus they needed to define their own identity and their own vision of the world. For the colonized, the definition of who they were was imposed from without by the colonial powers. In the present century, these dilemmas have reemerged as the result of the imperialist policies of the United States toward Latin America.29 The invasions of Nicaragua and Mexico in this century by U.S. troops, the CIA-inspired overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile under Allende, and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba are clear examples of these imperialist policies.30 The economic underdevelopment and dependent status of Latin American countries and the numerous political and military interventions of the United States have made it more difficult for Latin Americans to develop and implement their own sociopolitical and philosophical conceptions of reality. In short, the collective experience of colonialism and oppression has underscored for Latin American philosophers and intellectuals the importance of addressing issues concerning cultural identity and self-determination.
The legacy of sociopolitical and cultural oppression in Latin America has also given rise to a distinctive conception of the nature and function of philosophical reflection. Philosophy is not seen as a discipline that is conceptually autonomous and isolated but rather as a field of intellectual discourse that incorporates sociology, economics, literature, politics, history, art, anthropology, culture, religion, and everyday life. This conception of philosophy is best exemplified by the Latin American pensador, who is a thinker who does not separate philosophy from other disciplines and who considers concrete action as an essential part of upholding particular philosophical positions. The spheres of action and reflection are thus not dichotomized from one another, but are understood as being intrinsically linked. The pensador is an intellectual who arrives at his or her philosophical viewpoint by drawing from all relevant areas of human investigation and by making connections between disciplines that are generally compartmentalized within the Western philosophical tradition.
Another important feature of this integrative conception of philosophy is that it takes the concrete sociopolitical setting in which one finds oneself as the point of departure for philosophical reflection. The idea here is that one’s philosophical vision is necessarily conditioned by one’s circumstances and life experiences. It is only from this concrete reality that one can address the supposedly “universal” philosophical issues of freedom, justice, value, existential significance, and so forth. Human beings are not cognitive machines who can engage in abstract philosophical reflection by disassociating themselves from their particular life circumstances; they are flesh-and-blood beings whose thoughts and feelings are grounded in the particularities of their cultural and historical backgrounds. By adopting this conception of philosophy, Latin American philosophers have sought to articulate their preoccupations and concerns by embracing the uniqueness and particularities of their collective cultural experiences.
The reason for focusing on the sociopolitical and economic effects of colonialism and imperialism on Latin America is that we need to be aware of these effects in order to frame properly the following discussion of some of the major philosophical movements in Latin America. Three of the four philosophical perspectives that we will discuss, namely, Marxism, the philosophy of liberation, and the theology of liberation, address in different ways the problems created by the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. These philosophical traditions have proposed different ideological paths by means of which the people of Latin America can become truly free and self-determined. And it is worthwhile to point out that the other philosophical movement we will analyze, positivism, despite its being categorized as politically conservative, also had as its stated pragmatic end the social, political, and economic progress of Latin America.
Auguste Comte and his followers in the middle of the nineteenth century developed a philosophical perspective known as positivism. This perspective was inspired by the great advances in physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences that had occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scientific knowledge was developing at an impressive rate, and there was a great eagerness on the part of philosophers and other intellectuals to use the emerging scientific worldview to analyze social and political problems. Reason and the scientific observation of physical phenomena were the twin pillars on which the new scientific perspective rested. Comte and the other adherents of positivism felt that by using the methodology of the natural sciences, social scientists could bring about the same advances in their fields as had been achieved in fields like physics, astronomy, biology, and mathematics. Comte maintained that the social and political order was governed by universal laws of human behavior that could be discovered through the use of reason and the methods of scientific investigation. By discovering the laws governing human behavior, one could create a utopian society in which all the social and political problems facing humanity would be resolved.
One of the central attractions of positivism, particularly in Latin America, was that it provided a blueprint for attaining progress and order. By following positivist principles, a society could move from the backward stages of underdevelopment in which ignorance and dogmatic beliefs predominated to a scientifically enlightened stage in which reason governed human behavior. These ideas were received favorably by some Latin American countries, which, after the struggles they had endured in attaining their independence, welcomed a philosophy that promised social progress and political stability.
Among those who were especially willing to embrace positivist doctrines were the members of the ruling classes of Latin American countries. This was partly because according to positivism, those individuals who were the best educated and most knowledgeable were the ones best fit to rule. Comtean positivism was essentially an elitist philosophy that placed great faith in the inherent rationality and goodness of the members of the ruling classes. Comte made the rather naive assumption that political leaders and powerful businessmen would base their decisions not on self-interest but on what was good for society as a whole. Positivism also provided political leaders with a justification for choosing policies that achieved social progress in a gradual, orderly manner instead of policies that would institute radical reform. Political leaders and members of the elite classes preferred a philosophy that advocated stability and order to doctrines that might threaten their power and control by demanding revolutionary change.31
Positivism influenced different Latin American countries in different ways. In Mexico, it helped the government free the educational system from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church. During the term of president Benito Juárez, an educational reform law was passed in 1867 that banned church schools and created primary and secondary lay schools throughout Mexico. This law also established a national center for higher education in Mexico City, which trained professionals for a variety of careers. However, positivism also had significant negative influences. Comte’s belief that the people of Western Europe were intellectually superior to nonwhite races reinforced racist attitudes that were still deeply entrenched, especially among the elite. The educational reforms benefited mostly the children of the upper classes. Also, during the thirty-year rule of the dictator Porfirio Díaz, positivism was adopted as Mexico’s official state doctrine and it was used to justify a policy of law and order. It thus provided a philosophical rationale for an authoritarian, often ruthless, government.
In Brazil, however, positivists were an influential force in challenging the legality of slavery in the 1880s. During this time, positivist thinkers were also at the forefront of those demanding institutional changes in the government of the emperor Dom Pedro II. The Brazilian positivists advocated more representative forms of government, even though they did not go so far as to argue for a truly egalitarian society. Even though positivism did not have a long-lasting influence on governmental policies, it was the first important philosophical school to emerge in Brazil and it furthered the development of the country’s intelligentsia.32
In general, the promise of positivism was greater than the actual results it produced. This occurred primarily for two reasons: (1) Positivist proposals for social change were often couched in excessively abstract, general terms, and (2) positivists did not pay sufficient attention to the practical problems that stood in the way of implementing their proposals. To an important extent, positivism was a utopian philosophy that did not take seriously enough human greed for wealth and power. The positivist vision of a society founded on rational principles depended on the eradication, at every level of society, of ignorance, illiteracy, superstition, and poverty. But illiteracy, poverty, and powerlessness continued to exist among the lower classes even in those Latin American countries purportedly committed to positivist ideals. The elite’s tenacious hold on political power and wealth made it practically impossible to implement the positivist vision of a new social and political order. Ultimately, the inability of positivism to provide an adequate analysis of the underlying factors that hindered the development of the countries of Latin America undermined its usefulness and viability as a philosophical doctrine capable of bringing about significant and lasting change.
As a philosophical and political perspective, Marxism over the past thirty years has had a powerful appeal to intellectuals, writers, and artists in Latin America. This is because it provides the methodological techniques and conceptual categories with which to develop penetrating and extensive analyses of the economic, political, and social problems facing Latin America. Even more important, Marxism brings to the forefront the question of what concrete, revolutionary actions should be undertaken to resolve these problems. We need only recall Marx’s famous dictum that the point of philosophy is “not only to understand reality, but to change it.” Because, for most Latin American thinkers, contact with poverty and oppression is practically unavoidable, a philosophical perspective that can both analyze oppression and demand and articulate a practical response to it is deeply appealing.
Basically, Marxism is an economic, political, and philosophical doctrine that maintains that capitalism is an exploitative economic system because it allows the capitalists—those who own a society’s means of production, such as factories, mills, machine shops, and so on—to accumulate great wealth at the expense of the workers. According to Marx, the workers are not paid for the full value of their work because the capitalists, in order to profit from workers’ labor, keep part of the value of their work for themselves. The difference between the value of the workers’ labor and what they get paid is called surplus value. By keeping the surplus value for themselves, capitalists are able to accumulate wealth by exploiting the labor of the workers.
Thus, capitalism is a system in which the workers produce objects of value (commodities), but in which they are prevented from enjoying the fruits of their labor because they are producing profit for someone else. The problem, for Marx, is that in a capitalist system the workers do not own the means of production and hence they do not have control over what they produce or the conditions under which they produce it. He argued that if the workers were to own the means of production, as they would in a communist society, they could work for their mutual benefit and not to enrich the capitalist owner. According to Marx, capitalism is essentially an oppressive economic system because it concentrates wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. But Marx thought that this concentration of wealth would lead to the destruction of the capitalist system; the proletariat (the working class) would ultimately revolt and overthrow the bourgeoisie (the ruling class of capitalists), thus attaining power in a communist revolution. The workers would then establish a society free of economic exploitation, with common ownership of the means of production.
Marx believed that the political, legal, and social institutions of a capitalist society, as well as that society’s values and cultural beliefs, reflected the interests of the rich. He thought that economic power was the basis for attaining political power and that the wealthy, using the political influence they gained by means of their wealth, shaped society for their own purposes. These Marxist views made sense to many Latin American thinkers who were historically aware of the great power and influence the Spaniards had enjoyed during the postcolonial period and who were also conscious of the vast inequalities in wealth and power between the different social classes in Latin American countries.
Also corroborated by the experiences of Latin American thinkers was Marx’s analysis of economic exploitation at the international level. According to Marx, in order for capitalism to develop and survive, it must constantly expand production, seek new markets to exploit, and develop economic networks that transcend national boundaries. The existence of multinational corporations that placed profit over human needs, the unequal terms of international trade that Latin American countries were forced to accept, and the exploitation of their natural resources by the advanced industrialized countries substantiated Marx’s claim that capitalism led to exploitation at both the national and international levels.33 In short, Marxism provided a philosophical framework that enabled Latin American thinkers to make sense of many important sociopolitical and economic factors affecting Latin American countries.
Despite its potential usefulness as an analytical tool for Latin American philosophers, Marxist thought, as concretely applied, has often been determined by events and conditions outside of Latin America. The communist parties in Latin America have tried to remain loyal to international communist movements. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Marxist thought in Latin America was deeply influenced by the ideological position of an international communist organization called the Second International.
The dominant view of the Second International, in which the communist parties of different countries were represented, was that communist revolutions would come about as a result of the expansion and evolution of capitalist forces and be initiated by the proletariat of advanced industrialized capitalist countries. Thus, the Second International did not appreciate the particular problems faced by the nonindustrialized, “backward” countries of Latin America (where capitalism was not highly developed), which were struggling to attain their autonomy from the imperialist countries on which they were economically dependent. The position of the Second International reflected a European bias that placed the locus of revolutionary change in the industrialized countries and that relegated the underdeveloped countries, with their masses of rural workers, to a secondary role in the evolution of communism.
In 1919, after the Russian Revolution, the Communist Third International was founded, and one of its primary purposes was to direct a worldwide communist revolutionary movement based on the organizational principles and strategies that had been successfully employed by the Bolsheviks in Russia. There were several important ways in which the position of the Third International differed from that of the Second International. There was a greater awareness of the sociopolitical and economic factors that affected the struggles for liberation of particular countries and there was an admission of the possibility, which had been denied in some previous interpretations of classical Marxism, that a country could undergo a communist revolution without first reaching the stage of advanced capitalism. Third World countries such as those of Latin America were now seen as facing special problems—such as liberating themselves from imperialism and attaining true national self-determination—not faced by the industrialized Western countries and as being autonomous agents of revolutionary change. Nevertheless, a Eurocentric bias remained in the Third Communist International insofar as the industrial proletariat of Western countries was still considered to be the force that would bring about the communist revolution. Furthermore, the Communist International never truly understood the role or importance of the indigenous populations in Latin American countries like Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
Thus, in the early part of this century Marxist analysis was rarely applied with an awareness of the specific circumstances facing Latin American countries. A notable exception was the work of the Peruvian writer José Carlos Mariategui. In what is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of Latin American Marxism, Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana, Mariategui analyzed the economic and sociopolitical problems of Peru from a Marxist perspective.34 He pointed out that Peru was basically an agricultural country with a feudalistic organizational structure and that the Indians, who constituted the great majority of the rural population, existed in a state of virtual servitude. Mariategui maintained that the highly efficient system of agricultural organization developed by the Incas had been destroyed by the Spaniards during the conquest, and that redistribution of the land to the Indians and restoration of the traditional, four-hundred-year-old agricultural structures were necessary for resolving the economic problems of Peru. In contrast to the orthodox Marxist position, which held that the industrial proletariat would be the agent of revolutionary change, Mariategui argued that in Peru it was the rural Indian who held the greatest potential for bringing about a Marxist revolution. Mariategui’s application of Marxist ideology to the situation in Peru was solidly grounded in a thorough knowledge and understanding of the historical, cultural, and economic aspects of Peruvian reality. Mariategui clearly recognized the importance of taking into account specific national circumstances before applying Marxist analyses, and he managed to break away from the Eurocentrism that plagued Marxism in Latin America in the early part of the twentieth century.
An event having a great impact on the way Marxism was understood in Latin America was the Cuban revolution. In 1958, guerrilla forces led by Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista and took control of Cuba. The Cuban revolution violated the central tenets of the dominant interpretations of Marxism, which maintained that communist revolutions could take place only through the leadership of a core of enlightened Marxist revolutionaries who were actively supported by the proletariat. The Cuban Communist Party played practically no role in directing the overthrow of the Batista government, and it was not the urban proletariat that defeated the government forces, but rather a relatively small band of guerrillas based in the mountainous areas of Cuba. The Cuban revolution showed Latin American Marxists the necessity of remaining flexible regarding strategic alternatives for bringing about revolutionary change and underscored the diversity of conditions under which such change could take place.
From the 1960s to the present, Marxist ideology in Latin America has been used primarily in two ways: (1) as an analytical tool for examining a number of sociological, political, and economic issues such as the impact of foreign capitalism in Latin America, the nature of imperialism and dependent capitalism, and the basic features of the colonial past; and (2) as a theoretical perspective for devising political strategies for movements of national liberation. Concerning the first way in which Marxist ideology has been employed, Marxist researchers in Latin America have in recent years made social scientific contributions whose significance extends even beyond Latin America.35 Regarding the second, Marxism has furthered the ideological development of national liberation movements in countries like Nicaragua and Guatemala. In these countries the rigidity of ideologically correct, externally imposed, party-line doctrines has given way to flexible pragmatism in dealing with concrete sociopolitical and economic issues. Latin American thinkers have recognized that even though Marxism can be a valuable analytical tool, it is not an inviolable doctrine that offers a privileged and infallible description of reality. A story is told in Nicaragua of a Sandinista worker who when asked by a reporter from the United States why he was a Marxist replied, “I am not a Marxist, I am a Sandinista. Marxism has important lessons to teach us, but it is not God’s word come down from heaven.”
Finally, it is important to point out that a critical factor affecting and impeding the implementation of Marxist alternatives in Latin America has been the economic, political, and military interventionism of the United States. We find prominent examples of this interventionism in the efforts of the CIA to undermine the democratically elected socialist government of Allende in Chile, the economic boycott and undermining of Cuba under Castro, and the economic and military support of the guerrilla forces trying to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. It is difficult to determine with a high degree of certainty how these governments would have fared in the absence of U.S. efforts to subvert them. What is clear, however, is that the economic, political, and military interventionism of the United States has had a powerful negative impact on the attempts of Marxist-inspired governments in Latin America to implement their political and economic policies and reforms. What we have here is another illustration of how foreign influences and interests have hindered the efforts of the people of Latin America to determine their own destiny.
The philosophy of liberation refers to a set of philosophical doctrines that originated in Argentina in the 1970s. The various doctrines that fall under this rubric share certain philosophical orientations and objectives. First, there is a commitment to philosophize from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. The philosophy of liberation focuses on the social needs and demands of the disfranchised. It articulates a vision of reality as seen through the perspective of those who have been excluded from the centers of power and influence. Second, philosophy is not seen as an abstract, purely conceptual enterprise disassociated from the political problems of the society in which it is situated; rather, it is seen as an instrument for bringing about concrete social and political change. Third, there is a reliance on interdisciplinary studies. The proponents of the philosophy of liberation believe that philosophy should incorporate, and be enriched by, the insights of sociology, history, economics, ethnology, and other studies. The disciplinary compartmentalization characteristic of academic institutions in the Western industrialized countries is rejected in favor of an integrated, comprehensive approach to philosophical reflection.
Perhaps the most prominent figure in the philosophy of liberation is the Argentinian philosopher Enrique Dussel. In the classic text The Philosophy of Liberation, he makes a fundamental distinction between the center and the periphery.36 Within the context of the international balance of power between countries, the center refers to the countries in Western Europe, the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union, while the periphery refers to the underdeveloped countries of the Third World (countries in Latin America would fall into this category). In the context of particular societies, however, the center refers to the socially and economically privileged classes, while the periphery denotes the classes of the poor and the oppressed. One of the central tenets of Dussel’s work is that the philosophy of the center is a tool that furthers the interests of the countries and social classes of the center in maintaining their privileged positions of influence and power. Traditional philosophy has purportedly been concerned with issues of universal relevance and significance, that is, with issues of concern to all people, regardless of social class, gender, or cultural background. But in actuality, the philosophy of the center has been developed mostly by males belonging to the dominant cultural traditions or social classes. Thus, traditional philosophy, although pretending to speak for all people, in fact reflects the interests and concerns of the dominant groups.
Philosophizing from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed has wide-ranging and interesting consequences for philosophy. Philosophy becomes an intellectual enterprise grounded in the concrete sociopolitical and cultural experiences of people who have been excluded from an active role in history. Issues like the nature of justice, liberty, equality, and truth are analyzed from a unique and different perspective.
However, there are certain difficult questions that can be raised regarding Dussel’s philosophy of liberation. First, it is not clear how, if at all, many important philosophical problems are affected by philosophizing from the viewpoint of the poor and the oppressed. For example, how is the analysis of the question of the existence of God, the nature of space and time, or the problem of induction affected by adopting the philosophy of liberation? It is easy to see how the analysis of some issues in social and political philosophy would be affected, but it is not obvious what it could mean to analyze many of the other classic philosophical issues from this stance.
Second, is there any guarantee that adopting the perspective of the poor and the oppressed necessarily leads to truly liberated and just points of view? Even though the experience of oppression is likely to give people some understanding of its nature, it is not necessarily the case that those who have experienced it are not capable of oppressing others. On the contrary, it is well established that groups that have experienced oppression, like working-class minority men, are quite capable of oppressing others, for example their wives or their children.
Finally, how is it possible to really take the stance of the poor and the oppressed if one is not a member of that class? What qualifies an individual as a representative of or speaker for the oppressed? Even though some philosophers who work within the tradition of the philosophy of liberation have experienced political persecution, one must nevertheless be very careful about privileging oneself by appropriating the voice of the poor and the oppressed. Most philosophers, by virtue of their education, knowledge, and skills, are not typical members of those groups for whom the philosophy of liberation aspires to speak. Any kind of appropriation of the voice of the poor and the oppressed must be carefully and critically examined.
Despite these dilemmas, however, the philosophy of liberation represents a genuine and productive attempt by Latin American philosophers to break away from dependence on European and American philosophy and to produce theoretical innovations within the philosophical arena.
The theology of liberation provides a radically new way of thinking about the meaning of Christian faith and commitment. Its founder, Gustavo Gutierrez, argues that a true understanding of the Bible and Christ’s life leads to a commitment to fight against the poverty and oppression suffered by the people of Latin America (or the country where one happens to live).37 Gutierrez maintains that one expresses one’s faith in the teachings of Christ through one’s actions in alleviating the suffering of the most marginalized and oppressed groups in society, and that one cannot claim to be a true Christian if one ignores the plight of those most in need of help. Being a Christian means following the example of Christ, who advocated loving one’s neighbor and who spent his life helping the needy and outcasts of society. Thus, according to Gutierrez, it is not enough for Christians to be “saved” by accepting Christ in a personal act of faith; they must also be willing to express that faith in their daily lives by working for social justice for those in greatest need.
Gutierrez also argues that having the commitment to contribute to the human struggle for liberation from poverty and injustice involves more than merely performing acts of charity and goodwill for the poor; it also involves working to change the underlying social, political, and economic structures that give rise to poverty and oppression. As long as the basic structures that cause poverty and injustice remain intact, the suffering of the poor will continue. He maintains that poverty and social injustice exist in Latin America primarily because of the exploitation of the workers by foreign and domestic capitalists. He argues that multinational corporations make large profits by exploiting the cheap labor available in Latin American countries and that making profit (and not improving the lives of the workers) is the primary motivation for foreign investment in Latin America. He believes that it is only by restructuring their economies and by eliminating their dependence on the major industrial powers that the countries of Latin America can deal with the problems of poverty and injustice.
The call for fundamental social change is one of the reasons the theology of liberation has had such a great impact in Latin America and in other parts of the world. But it is also the reason some critics of the theology of liberation have labeled it a Marxist ideology masquerading as Christian theology. In particular, conservative critics within the hierarchy of the Catholic church have alleged that the theology of liberation should be rejected because it espouses communist ideals. Saying that the theology of liberation is simply Marxism in disguise, however, is not really a fair criticism, because the central principles of the theology of liberation have an ethical and theological basis that is independent of Marxist principles. The theology of liberation employs Marxist analysis in arriving at an answer to the question of how, most effectively, to eliminate the poverty and economic injustices suffered by the poor of Third World countries. But there is no necessary or intrinsic connection between Marxism and the theology of liberation. One could retain the substance of the latter perspective while rejecting the contention that collective ownership of the means of production is the only way to achieve a just society in which the poor can live with dignity and respect.
The theology of liberation also proposes radical changes in the social and political role of the Catholic church. According to this theological perspective, the Catholic church should have a “preferential option for the poor.”38 In order to work toward a society in which people’s basic needs for food, shelter, medical care, employment, and education can be met, the church needs to transform its ties to those in power in society. The church must speak out against social injustices and abuses of power and must challenge the political and military authorities when they suppress the legitimate demands of the poor for political freedoms and the basic necessities of life. The theology of liberation maintains that the Catholic church has for too long been content to administer to people’s spiritual needs while failing to involve itself in their everyday struggles against poverty and political injustices.
A concrete example of the way in which people in some Latin American countries have combined religious worship with political involvement is through the comunidades de base (grass roots communities). These community groups, besides studying the Bible and promoting living by Christian ideals, provide grass roots organizational structures that poor people can use to address such widespread problems as the torture or disappearance of relatives and friends while in the hands of the authorities, the consequences of extreme poverty and the lack of basic social services, and the often ruthless actions taken by the political and military authorities in response to their demands.
In assessing the adequacy of the theology of liberation from a philosophical or theoretical point of view, we must first of all note that it suffers from a rather obvious limitation, namely, its reliance on the truth or validity of Christian doctrines. From a theoretical perspective, this is a limitation because philosophers are likely to question the truth of such fundamental Christian views as that God exists, that Jesus was the son of God, and that there is an eternal life after death. But if the theology of liberation is viewed as a doctrine whose primary purpose is to provide spiritual guidance and to alleviate the suffering and oppression of poor and marginalized people, then we must assess its adequacy by its sociopolitical impact and influence. Seen from this perspective, the theology of liberation has been partly successful, since it has been able to call attention to the problems of the poor and the oppressed of Latin America and has been at the forefront of their struggles for political freedoms and adequate living conditions. Indeed, the theology of liberation has had greater sociopolitical impact than the philosophy of liberation, which is also concerned with the problems of the marginalized people of Latin America. Several factors may account for its greater influence.
First, the theology of liberation provides a spiritual dimension that is missing in other liberation ideologies like Marxism or the philosophy of liberation. It employs to good advantage the powerful and pervasive need that exists in many cultures (especially Latin American cultures) to make a spiritual connection with the transcendent. The theology of liberation is a perspective that unifies religious and political concerns by addressing both spiritual and physical needs. It recognizes that any theological or religious worldview that does not take into account people’s basic economic needs is detached from concrete, everyday reality and that any revolutionary doctrine that does not address the spiritual dimension of life is limited and incomplete. Second, the theology of liberation successfully uses both formal and informal religious and social structures to organize and mobilize the poor. At the formal level, church-centered activities and programs provide a forum for raising issues of concern to the poor and the oppressed and for developing strategies to deal with them. At the informal level, the grass roots comunidades de base provide the poor with the flexible organizational structures they need for developing and implementing a wide variety of tactics and strategies for resolving their problems. Third, the basic principles and ideas of the theology of liberation are expressed in terminology that is understandable to the people it seeks to address. One of the great ironies of the philosophy of liberation and other doctrines of liberation is that they usually couch their ideas in a dense jargon that is practically unintelligible to anyone but the academic specialist. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the advocates of these ideologies to reach precisely those people they are trying to politicize. The proponents of the theology of liberation, by contrast, use symbolic and metaphorical language to make their ideas understandable to audiences who lack a formal education and even basic literacy skills. In summary, the theology of liberation has important lessons to teach philosophers who have an avowed interest in transforming the social and political consciousness of the poor and the oppressed.
This is especially true of our understanding of the Mayan civilization. In the past several decades the deciphering of Mayan writing and iconography and new archaeological discoveries have changed our conception of some basic aspects of Mayan culture. See, for example, David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), pp. 13–14. In my accounts of the Aztec and Mayan cosmologies, I rely primarily on this excellent, philosophically oriented text and on that classic work of philosophical anthropology by Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963).
Limitations of space and time preclude the analysis of some of the other pre-Columbian worldviews besides those of the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca cultures. These same limitations narrow the scope of my analysis of philosophical perspectives in both the colonial period and contemporary Latin America. My objective here is to provide an overview of some of the historically significant themes in the philosophical thought of the ancient and modern peoples of Latin America.
Carrasco, p. 51.
Carrasco, pp. 54–55.
Leon-Portilla, p. 84.
Carrasco, p. 118.
Leon-Portilla, pp. 44–45, citing Bernardino de Sahagun, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, Vol. 1, ed. Acosta Saignes, pp. 14–15.
Linda Schele and Mary Ann Miller, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (Fort Worth, Tex.: Kimball Art Museum, 1986), pp. 177–78.
Ibid., p. 181.
Carrasco, p. 100.
I do not have the space here to go into a detailed explanation of the complex Mayan system of interlocking calendars. Suffice it to say that they developed their calendar system, which consisted of at least six different calendars, in order to pinpoint and keep track of the important events in their history. For an excellent explanation of their calendar system, see Schele and Miller, pp. 317–21.
Dennis Tedlock, trans., Popul Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 160.
Carrasco, p. 53.
Leon-Portilla, pp. 158–62.
Ibid., p. 163.
Ibid., p. 74.
Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs,: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 213–14, citing Miguel Leon-Portilla, “Translating Amerindian Texts,” Latin American Indian Literatures 7 (1983): 101–22, p. 119. In her book Clendinnen analyzes the implications of this poem for the Aztecs’ vision of reality.
Clendinnen, pp. 214–16.
Leon-Portilla, p. 77.
Ideología del Antiguo Perú, diss., University of Lima, Peru, 1982.
Father Bernabe Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 44–45.
Ibid., p. 56.
Plato (427–347 B.C.) maintained that there was an otherworldly, ideal abstract entity, or spiritual essence, for every type or category of concrete object in this world.
Carrasco, p. 129.
Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Coninent, trans. Cedric Belfrage (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), p. 33.
La Malintzi and El Cuatlapanga are beings associated with rain and other natural elements. They figure prominently in the beliefs of the people of traditional communities of the Tlaxcala region near Mexico City.
Sylvanus G. Morley and George W. Brainerd, rev. Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983), p. 462.
There are, of course, exceptions to these tendencies in Western thought. Karl Marx, for example, maintained that economic and sociopolitical factors were of central importance for understanding the intellectual and philosophical perspectives of a society. Nevertheless, we can still speak in a general way of a Western philosophical tradition in which certain orientations have predominated.
Imperialism refers to the policy and practice that a more powerful country follows when it tries to control, either directly or indirectly, the territory, economic resources, and/or political events of another less powerful country (or countries).
The negative impact of U.S. economic policies and military interventionism in Latin America is well documented. See, for example, Jonathan L. Fried, Marvin E. Gettleman, Deborah T. Levenson, and Nancy Peckenham, eds., Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History (New York: Grove Press, 1983). It is not my purpose here to discuss or assess the consequences of U.S. foreign policies in Latin America. It is important, however, to realize that the political and economic oppression of Latin America did not end with colonialism but continues into the present. This realization will help us to understand why certain issues have preoccupied Latin American philosophers.
Miguel Jorrin and John D. Martz, Latin-American Political Thought and Ideology (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), p. 126.
Ibid., pp. 140–43.
For an account of the economic exploitation of Latin American countries by the colonial powers and later by industrialized countries like the United States, see Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America, op. cit.
José Carlos Mariategui, Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana: Escritos de Mundial y Amauta (Lima: Ediciones Amauta, 1928).
Ibid., pp. 126–27.
Enrique Dussel, The Philosophy of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1985). For a concise exposition of its central themes, see Douglas Kellner, “The Periphery, the Oppressed, and the Philosophy of Liberation,” in Theory, Culture, and Society (London: Sage), Vol. 4 (1987), pp. 735–44.
Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973), and The Power of the Poor in History, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983).
This is the celebrated phrase used in the influential document prepared by the Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968. This document signaled a significant change in the church’s view of the poor in Latin America.
axis mundi—A place or object regarded as the center of power of the cosmos or universe.
calmecacs—Aztec centers of higher education where the legends, traditions, and history of the culture were preserved and recorded. It was here that the Aztec wise men and poets raised questions about the nature of the world and their capacity to know reality.
cosmic tree—A symbol of the earth as a fertile, living entity capable of periodic regeneration.
Gaia Hypothesis—A view defended by some biologists and ecologists that the earth is a complex living organism consisting of many interacting ecological systems.
huacas—A general term used by the Incas to refer to deities, places of worship, and sacred places. It was also used to refer to natural objects that were extraordinary in size or shape.
Huitzilopochtii—The patron god of the Aztecs. He was also their war god, who was identified with the sun.
ihiyotl—A life force concentrated in the liver. The Aztecs believed it provided humans with bravery, desire, hatred, love, and happiness.
mallinalis—Spiral—shaped channels through which supernatural forces interacted between the celestial, terrestrial, and underworld levels in the Aztec universe.
metaphysical—Having to do with the area of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality beyond what is apparent to the senses.
Nahuatl—The language spoken by the Aztecs and most of the people of ancient central Mexico.
Ometeotl—The dual male/female god of the Aztecs who created the universe and sustains all life.
Pachacamac—One of the principal gods of the Incas, who created the earth and was the animating force of all living creatures.