Nahua

By Alan R. Sandstrom

Mexicano, Mexicanero, Tepoztecan, Huasteca Nahua, Nahuatl, Aztec.  

Many Nahua live on the periphery of what was the center of the Aztec empire.  Scholars commonly divide contemporary Nahua into subgroups based on the geographic areas where their populations are concentrated.  Major Nahua populations are designated according to these regions and today include Nahua of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Durango, Guerrero, Central Highlands, Sierra Norte de Puebla, Gulf Coast, and Central America.  Of these, the greatest number live in the Central Highlands, Sierra Norte de Puebla, and the Gulf Coast.  The Gulf Coast — home to the largest concentration of speakers of Nahua dialects in Mexico — is divided into the Huasteca (northern zone), Totonacapan (north central), Zongolica (central Gulf Coast), and Southern Gulf Coast (southern Veracruz and parts of Tabasco).  Mexican states with the greatest number of speakers include Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Morelos.  Smaller populations are found in Michoacán, Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit, Tlaxcala, the state of Mexico, Oaxaca, and Tabasco.  A total of 7,732 towns in Mexico are listed in which 5% or more of the population speaks a dialect of Nahuatl (INALI 2005).  At the time of the conquest and continuing until today, Nahuatl speakers extend down into Central America.  Those Nahua in contemporary Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are known as Pipil, meaning "children" or "nobles."  Nahua in Nicaragua are called Nicarao, after a 16th-century leader who also gave his name to the modern country.  These peripheral people share many cultural traits with the Nahua of the Central Highlands and it is clear that populations of Nahua migrated into Central America sometime before the arrival of the Spaniards (Fowler 1989). [Editor’s note: the Tepoztlán collection, formerly a separate collection, is now included in the Nahua collection. Tepoztlán is one of a large number of Nahua municipalities.]

The name "Nahua" is used by scholars to refer to Native Americans of Middle America who speak one of the closely related dialects of the Nahuatl language.  Nahua itself is a Nahuatl term that means "intelligible," "clear," or "audible."  Nahua people generally recognize the appellation "Nahua" but rarely employ it to refer to themselves or to each other.  More commonly, they use the word "Mexicano" for the language and either "Mexicano" or "Mexicanero" as a general name for their ethnic group.  The latter terms derive from the ancient Nahuatl Mexica (pronounced me shē' ca) but they have been Hispanicized and are pronounced and pluralized as in Spanish.  In the 16th century, the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs from the capital city Tenochtitlan called themselves and were known by others as "Mexica" and many Nahua of today continue to use this general term when referring to their ethnic group.  "Mexicano" in modern Spanish connotes a citizen of Mexico and thus, for the Nahua, the ethnonym has a double meaning: a citizen of the modern nation and a proud descendant of the Aztecs.  Nahua also use the term masehuali (pl. masehualmej) meaning "countryman" or "farmer" to refer to themselves or any other Native American regardless of ethnic identity.  They use the Nahuatl word coyotl to refer to any non-Indian.  Some writers refer to the language as well as the ethnic group as Nahuatl or Aztec.  The name "Aztec" properly applies only to the short-lived Mexica Empire that was forged by certain central highland Nahua groups before the arrival of the Spaniards.

 It is notoriously difficult to evaluate the accuracy of population figures for indigenous groups in Middle America.  Part of the problem is that many people are reluctant to report to census takers that they speak an indigenous language because of the low socioeconomic status accorded to Native Americans.  Also, many mestizo people speak an indigenous language and may live in an indigenous community even though they identify as Hispanic.  Finally, the census reports on language speakers only for those five years old and above, leaving out a substantial portion of the population.  The 2000 Mexican census reports that 6,011,202 people five years old and above speak an indigenous language and that 1,376,026 of these speak a dialect of Nahuatl.  Perhaps a more accurate figure is that 2,176,922 people in the census are reported to live in a household where a dialect of Nahuatl is spoken.  Not all members of such a household speak Nahuatl so it is likely that there are between 1.3 and 2 million speakers of the language.  Populations of Nahua in Central America are relatively small.  Census figures that include language are available only for Nicaragua and in 2005 there were 11,113 speakers of Nahoa-Nicarao and 46,002 speakers of Chorotega-Nahua-Mange.  This last census category seems to be an amalgamated group that includes non-Nahua speakers.  There are more speakers of dialects of Nahuatl than any other indigenous language in Middle America.

Dialects of Nahuatl (including both -tl and -t variants) are the southernmost extension of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages (sometimes called Yuta-Nawan or Yuto-Nahua).  The northern branch of the family encompasses languages spoken in the American Southwest and includes, among others, Ute, Paiute, Hopi, Comanche, and Shoshone.  Related languages spoken in the southern branch include Mayo, Opata-Eudeve, Tepehuan, Tarahumara, and Cora.

Most authorities believe that Nahuatl came into the Mesoamerican heartland from the northwest of Mexico and that it was established sometime before 500 CE.  It was the language spoken by the Aztecs (Mexica-Tenochca), Toltecs, Tlaxcalans, and many other pre-Hispanic and contact-era peoples.  By the time of the arrival of the Spaniards in the early 16th century, Nahuatl was the dominant language throughout the culture area well on its way to becoming a lingua franca.  Mesoamerica is one of only seven cultural areas on earth where people managed to develop, without foreign intervention, urban civilization and state-level political organization (Carrasco 2001:213).  The arrival of the Spaniards brought destruction of the urban centers and massive death that probably exceeded 90% of the indigenous population within a few decades of the conquest in 1521.  But the Spaniards also brought with them the desire to convert indigenous people to their version of Christianity and a penchant for meticulous documentation and record keeping.  Reports were prepared on the newly conquered territories by government and religious officials and sent to the king of Spain.  These reports included observations on the indigenous people to facilitate governance and conversion efforts.  Earlier friars, chief among them the remarkable Bernardino de Sahagún, learned Nahuatl and taught Aztec scribes to write in their language using the Spanish alphabet.  Under Sahagún's influence, his followers and those of other like-minded clerics collected and wrote about histories, royal genealogies, customary practices of all types, religious beliefs and rituals, and the complex calendar system.  Among other efforts, they wrote plays in Nahuatl that were performed to instruct the people in Christian theology and beliefs.  The practice of keeping records in Nahuatl such as deeds, wills, court records, and testimonies continued for centuries and has provided scholars with priceless documentation on the transformation of Nahua culture over a period of nearly half a millennium.

A complicating factor in this complicated situation is that acculturative pressures from the Euro-American world that have been in play for hundreds of years have affected local groups unevenly.  Indigenous people living in or near urban centers have experienced more intensive pressure to conform to "modernization" than have people in more inaccessible areas.  But improvements in roads and transportation systems along with profound upheavals in the regional economy have accelerated the pace of change even in the most remote regions.  Ironically, sometimes pressure to conform to the local version of modernity causes people to develop a stronger ethnic identity as Native Americans (Sandstrom 2008).  Thus the paradoxical situation can develop in which people closer to the city are more committed to indigenous language and cultural practices than people in distant villages.

Over the decades, published ethnographic studies of the Nahua have reflected major trends in anthropology and the social sciences.  It is impossible to highlight all but a few of these works.  Some major topics treated in Nahua ethnography include loss of identity (Friedlander 1975), former Nahua communities (Mulhare de la Torre 2001), construction of ethnic identity (Sandstrom 1991, Schryer 1990, Berdan, et al. 2008, Rodríguez López 2003), kinship and social organization (Arizpe Schlosser 1973, Nutini 1968, Taggart 1975, 1983, Sandstrom 2000b), civil religious hierarchy (Dehouve 1976), sociolinguistics (Hill and Hill 1986), fiestas (Reyes García 1960), ritual kinship (Nutini and Bell 1980), religious iconography (Hunt 1977, Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986), economic development (Chevalier and Buckles 1995), witchcraft (Nutini and Roberts 1993, Knab 1995), myth (Preuss 1982), religion (Báez-Jorge and Gómez Martínez 1998, Gómez Martínez 2002), Signorini and Lupo 1989, Ingham 1986), summaries of Nahua culture (Madsen 1969, Sandstrom 1995, 2000a, Gonzáles 1995, Taggart 1995, Rodríguez López and Valderrama Rouy 2005, Vargas Ramírez 1995, Masferrer Kan and Báez Cubero 1995, Saldaña Fernández 1995, Alvarado 1994, Villela F. 1995, Sierra Carrillo 1989), broad-based community studies (Chamoux 1981, Montoya Briones 1964, Sandstrom 1991), Protestantism (Sandstrom 2001), cognized environment (Sandstrom 2005), and culture change (Dehouve 1976).  Much Nahua ethnography has been done by Mexican scholars and their students and the results of their efforts are published in Spanish in monographs, journal articles, and book chapters.

Researchers from the very beginning have been working on these documents but there has been a notable increase in professional scholarship on Mesoamerica over the past 30 years.  Not only historians and ethnohistorians but also archaeologists, art historians, linguists, and ethnographers have been devoting their efforts to better understand the aftermath of the great encuentro between indigenous Mesoamerica and Europe.  Evolving approaches that have guided this complex ongoing effort are summarized by John Monaghan (2000) and by John Monaghan and John Hawkins (2001).  The Nahua are one of several dozen surviving indigenous ethnic groups in contemporary Mesoamerica, but it has proved impossible to identify specific cultural traits (besides language) that distinguish them from the others.  All Native American cultures in the region partake of a common Mesoamerican cultural tradition that is of considerable antiquity and that was widely shared at the time of the conquest.  Contemporary Nahua are scattered over an immense area and often surrounded by other indigenous groups as well as Hispanic elites.  What we find in this case are regional differences in culture that override common distinguishing elements associated with a particular ethnic group.  The result is that Nahua of the Huasteca, for example, share more in common with their Tepehua, Otomi, and Huastec neighbors, even though they speak unrelated languages, than they do with Nahua living hundreds of miles away in the state of Guerrero.  The ethnographic data on the Nahua do not allow analysts to specify social, political, or economic practices that distinguish the Nahua regardless of region.  This same statement can be made about most of the other indigenous ethnic groups in Mesoamerica as well.  Otomis, for example, from the Central Highlands may not have much in common with fellow ethnic group members in the Huasteca.  There are some smaller groups in the region such as the Huichols and Lacandons who can probably be distinguished from other ethnic groups based on cultural attributes but even these people share in widely dispersed Mesoamerican patterns.  Edward Spicer (1962) has written about the historical factors that have led indigenous people in Mesoamerica to lose specific tribal or ethnic-group identity and to substitute in its place a generalized identity as Native American.

Archaeological, ethnohistorical, and art-historical studies have helped to clarify the Nahua experience from the pre-Hispanic period through colonialism and independence while ethnographic studies are contributing to increased understanding of people's lives under current conditions.  In 1926, Robert Redfield began a pioneering ethnographic study in the highland Nahua town of Tepoztlán.  Published in 1930 as a preliminary study, Tepoztlán: A Mexican Village stood for many years as a classic account of peasant village life.  Redfield portrayed the community members as peaceful and conservative, steeped in Catholic ritual practices and holding to many elements from their pre-Hispanic past.  Seventeen years later Oscar Lewis undertook a restudy of Tepoztlán the results of which shook anthropology to its core.  Published in 1951, his Lifein a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied , was a far more thorough study of the community.  Lewis' account went significantly beyond Redfield's ethnography to portray Tepoztlán as a more heterogeneous community riven with strife that sometimes erupted into violence.  The ensuing controversy undermined scientific claims of objectivity in anthropology and social science in general.  Much effort has been expended trying to reconcile these seemingly incompatible accounts of Nahua community life.

The Nahua generally live in small communities ranging from hamlets consisting of a few families to towns of four- or five- thousand inhabitants.  Larger, more acculturated communities such as Tepoztlán may be organized according to the Spanish model with a church and plaza at the center.  Smaller villages may consist of scattered groupings of houses belonging to kin.  The design of their dwellings generally reflect the region they live in and environmental factors.  For example, Nahua of the tropical Huasteca generally build single-room houses from poles lashed to a frame topped with a thatched roof.  Sometimes the people apply mud mixed with chopped grass to one or more walls for privacy or to keep out wind and rain.  The floor plan is rectangular, although sometimes one of the short ends is rounded.  Floors are made of packed earth and kept clean by women who sprinkle them with water and sweep them daily.  Houses at higher elevations may be constructed with planks, mud bricks, or other materials that deflect chill winds.  An architectural cycle is evident whereby people use a newer house for sleeping and other activities while retaining the older habitation for use as a kitchen.

With the rapid economic development of Mexico and improved roads, Nahua houses are increasingly constructed of cement blocks with tarpaper, ceramic tile, or corrugated-iron roofs.  Such houses may also have cement floors as well.  Increasingly, even remote villages are connected to the national electric grid and many also have some form of running water.  It is not unusual in remote areas to see a television antenna sticking out from the peak of a thatch-roofed house.  In many cases, the new cement-block housing had advantages over the traditional designs.  People complain that building materials such as thatching and straight poles are increasingly difficult to obtain and that traditional houses had to be replaced when they began to deteriorate (sometimes after decades of use).  The new dwellings are more permanent and less susceptible to fire.  In the hotter climates, however, people admit that the new houses act like airless ovens that trap heat and make living in them unbearable.  Traditional houses were cool in the heat and allowed the air or smoke from cooking fires to pass through them even on the hottest days.  Here is an excellent example of modern technology actually reducing the standard of living and quality of life for people rather than representing an improvement.

In general, interiors are sparsely furnished with few manufactured items.  Each house has a high, narrow table that serves as an altar.  It may contain candles, an incense brazier, a cross, and commercially produced pictures of saints.  The kitchen may be at one end of the house or in a separate nearby building.  It consists of one or more fireplaces, either on the ground or raised on a fire table made of timber and mud.  Three stones surround the fire so that round-bottomed earthenware pots can be placed on it for cooking.  Against the wall or hung from the rafters is shelving that may hold a water pot, dishes, unused cookware, food items, and utensils, usually simply spoons.  People sleep on woven mats that are placed either on the floor or on a wooden frame.  During the day people roll up the mats and store them in a corner of the house.  Additional structures may include granaries for storing corn, in some regions a sweatbath, and more recently, a latrine.  Harvested maize still in its shucks is neatly stacked in the house.  Nahua often have small gardens in close proximity to their houses planted with herbs, flowers, fruit trees, coffee plants, and other useful or ornamental plants.  Households usually maintain a few patio animals such as turkeys, chickens, ducks, or pigs, and dogs are often kept to guard the property and warn when visitors approach.

Transportation in most Nahua communities depends on walking or riding horseback.  With improved roads more people are traveling by truck, bus, car, bicycle, or even railroad.  Increasingly, younger Nahua are traveling to urban areas in Mexico to find employment.  Often they end up living in poor conditions in slums bordering the cities.  Many also take the long and dangerous journey to the United States to seek work in agriculture and factories.  They often live in crowded conditions to save money.  In these circumstances, most people are in the process of losing their identities as Nahua and they become marginalized, impoverished mestizos.

Most Nahua practice a mixed form of agriculture with a heavy emphasis on maize growing along with other crops that reflect environmental factors and availability of land.  Depending on the terrain and resources, individual farmers may rely on the ancient technique of slash-and-burn horticulture using human labor and a machete to prepare the field and a dibble stick for planting.  Others may use a horse- or mule-drawn plow to turn the soil, or, increasingly, a tractor to prepare the field and assist in planting and harvesting.  Besides maize, the Nahua grow beans, chile peppers, squashes, camotes, onions, tomatoes, citrus fruits, papayas, bananas, chayotes, avocados, mangos, tobacco, maguey, nopal cactus, and condiments such as cilantro or mint.  The people depend on hunting, fishing, and gathering to supply them with food and construction materials.  Nahua may take advantage of government programs or market opportunities to plant coffee, orange groves, or sugarcane as a cash crop.  In addition to patio animals, more prosperous Nahua many own a few head of cattle.  Labor needs are met by mano vuelta (labor exchange) or by paying helpers.  Virtually every family supplements their farming activities with secondary occupations (see below).  Increasingly, younger family members move either temporarily or permanently to Mexico City, regional urban centers, or the United States to earn money and send it back to their relatives.

Major cash crops include maize, sugarcane, and coffee. Animals raised include turkeys, chickens, pigs, bees, and, in well-to-do households, cattle. Virtually all Nahua families supplement their farming activities with secondary occupations.

In the more tropical rural areas, one of the few industrial activities is the manufacture of sugarloaf.  Individual families use a wooden or metal, trapiche (cane press) to squeeze cut stalks and extract the juice.  This liquid is boiled until a thick syrup is rendered, then poured into molds and cooled.  The loaf is wrapped in dried cane leaves and sold in the market.  Families may also purchase an electric mill for grinding corn.  They charge a small fee to neighbors who wish to avoid the hard labor of grinding corn on a mano and metate (broad volcanic stone with smaller cylindrical rubbing stone).  In Nahua towns, individuals may own repair shops, bakeries, or other quasi-industrial enterprises.  Some Nahua in the state of Guerrero several decades ago began to sell pottery and paintings based on pottery design in the tourist markets of Cuernavaca.  The market for these colorful creations exploded when artists began to paint on amate bark paper that they secured from Otomi traders from the Sierra Norte de Puebla.  Demand grew even further for these original works when artists began to paint scenes depicting life in their villages and towns.  Entire Nahua communities produce the amate paintings that now appeal to a worldwide clientele.  The Nahua transition from small-scale rural agriculturalists to major players in the international tourist market is one of the most remarkable economic transformations in the world (Eshelman 1988).

Major trading takes place in weekly markets organized throughout Mexico.  Many Nahua attend one or more markets, sometimes at considerable distances from their community.  Larger Nahua communities hold weekly markets in town and may have speciality shops for meat or produce that operate all week.  

The major division of labor is by sex and age.  Women prepare food, make and repair clothing, attend to domestic chores, maintain patio animals, help with the harvest, and are primary care givers for children.  They may engage in a number of secondary occupations to help increase family income.  These activities include bread baking, embroidery, sewing, selling firewood, pottery making, bonesetting, curing illness, midwifery, operating a stall in the market, or selling cooked items.  Men clear and plant fields, care for larger animals, build and maintain houses, hunt, fish, weave fishing nets, make sugarloaf, and carry produce or sugarloaf to the market to sell.  They may also engage in carpentry, construction work, truck driving, running a small store or market stall, clearing the forest for mestizo ranchers, picking coffee beans, temporary wage labor in neighboring towns and major cities, playing music, curing illness, raising bees, butchering animals for meat, or becoming a schoolteacher.  Children care for siblings, help in the fields and around the house, run errands, go to the market, and generally make themselves useful.  Older members of the family contribute their labor and expertise to the household for as long as they are physically able.

The land-tenure situation throughout Mexico is exceedingly complex.  Dispossession of indigenous lands during the colonial period and after independence from Spain was partially reversed following the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.  The plan was to redistribute land to dispossessed indigenous peoples in the form of ejidos (system of landholding based on pre-Hispanic practices).  Ejido land was granted to household heads who agreed to farm it.  Individual fields were allocated to each household head who could pass them on to heirs.  If there were no heirs or if the household head failed to farm for a specified period of time the land was returned to the ejido for redistribution.  Ejido land could not be sold or alienated from the community.  Community decisions were to be made by an assembly of household heads or their representatives.  Up until 1992, many Nahua lived on ejidos or had access to ejido  land as well as private, rented, or sharecropped property.  Following the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican government changed the constitution with the intention of privatizing the ejidos.  Land was turned over to individual families but in many cases the political offices and structure of the ejido has remained.  Access to farmland is a key element in Nahua identity and material well-being and much blood has been spilled over the years because of land disputes.

Descent is determined bilaterally.  Kinship terminology tends to be a combination of Eskimo and Hawaiian types.  The nuclear family is the most important kin group among the Nahua but these units are often linked through male and sometimes female ties to form functioning extended families.  The youngest male offspring often cares for the aged parents while his brothers build individual houses nearby.  The result is a non-residential patrilocal extended family that exchanges labor in farming and house building and often forms a political faction in village politics.  Nonresidential families based on sisters building houses close to each other are also in evidence but they are far fewer in number.  There is a clear domestic cycle that oscillates between the extended family and nuclear family.  Kinship rules are not rigidly applied and nonrelatives may build nearby as well.

Ritual kinship is vitally important in all Nahua communities and it serves to extend the circle of people that can be counted on in times of need.  In-laws frequently become ritual kinsmen and others may enter into the relationship through sponsorship of events such as baptisms and school graduations.

Nahua kinship terminology has characteristics of both the Hawaiian and Eskimo systems. Parents are distinguished from parents' siblings, and grandparents are distinguished from their siblings, although not according the side of the family to which they belong. Cousins and those married to cousins are in some instances equated with Ego's siblings and their spouses.

Marriage customs vary according to degree of acculturation.  In more remote communities, such as found in the Huasteca, a couple may elope without permission of the bride's parents, usually following a community-wide ritual or social occasion held for other reasons.  Sometimes the bride's father feigns anger upon learning of the elopement but he eventually reconciles to the inevitable union.  In some communities marriage is a more formal affair in which an older kinsman of the prospective husband acts as a go-between and pleads the young man's case to the family of the potential wife.  Gifts are exchanged, feasts may be held and the two families enter into ritual kinship with one another.  Wedding celebrations derived from the Catholic or Protestant traditions are increasingly common in Nahua communities.  Postmarital residence is ideally patrilocal but actual practice is in fact more flexible.

Nahua domestic life takes place in and around the house.  All family members rise early, usually before dawn, but the woman of the household gets up first to start the fire, grind the maize, and prepare tortillas.  Younger children accompany their mother throughout the day and older children attend school.  The man often goes to his fields to work but will take a break when his wife brings food for lunch.  In the evening, the family relaxes, welcomes visitors, and engages in craft production or other activities.

A majority of domestic units are nuclear families.  After marriage a young couple may live in the household of the groom's parents until they are able to build their own place of residence.  This practice creates a temporary extended family living in the same household.

In theory, property is passed equally to male and female descendants.  However, the all-important family lands usually pass to male heirs under the assumption that it is they who will farm them.  Daughters acquire access to land through their husbands.  In the absence of male heirs, daughters inherit land rights.  In cases where arable land is scarce, the eldest son or daughter inherits the bulk of the estate, leaving younger siblings to face the problem of gaining access to additional fields.  The house usually reverts to the youngest son who will care for surviving aged parents.

Nahua children are provided much attention, love, and support by both their fathers and mothers.  Often an older sister cares for younger siblings during the day, freeing parents to pursue their work unhindered.  A child is normally surrounded by many relatives who are nearly the same age, and children have the run of the house and surrounding areas.  Parents usually value education for their children and support local schools.

The following description of the social organization of the Huastecan Nahua applies to many Nahua communities throughout Middle America.  Nahua social organization can be conceived as a grouping of cellular structures or as a series of concentric rings surrounding the nuclear- or extended-family household.  One step removed from the household is the nonresidential extended family.  The next largest subdivision is the toponymic group composed of residents of a named subarea in a community.  These subareas are based on residence, may entail shared ritual obligations, and they often include non-kin.  The toponymic group sometimes takes on attributes of a house-type society as outlined by Claude Levi-Strauss (Sandstrom 2000).  Smaller Nahua communities are often divided into upper and lower halves, which constitute an extension of the social circle beyond named subareas.  This division is probably the remnant of an ancient moiety system.  Larger communities may be divided into two or more barrios, and these can be important extra-kin groupings as well.  The entire village or town constitutes the next encompassing circle.  Daughter or fissioned communities, usually established by families in search of land or work, extend social relations outside of the local community.  These settlements may serve as a buffer between individual communities and the municipio and state levels of government.

Larger towns are invariably led by mestizo elites, with Nahua occupying lesser positions in the hierarchy.  A civil-religious hierarchy or cargo system often characterizes larger communities.  In this system, individuals work their way up a series of unpaid political offices and sponsorships of Catholic saints' celebrations.  Economic development and the increased importance of Protestantism in Middle America is apparently undermining the traditional cargo system and it may soon disappear or transform into something else in Nahua communities.  In more traditional villages, an informal council of male elders may be looked to for leadership, particularly in times of crisis.  Ejidos and former ejidos continue to be run by elected political officials as mandated by state and federal law.

Most Nahua communities require that each household head or a substitute work one day a week for the welfare of the group.  People who miss their obligation must pay the equivalent of one day's wages into the treasury.  Even women who inherit land or widows who farm their husband's land must provide labor.  The institution is often called the faena or fagina.  Projects are determined by elected officials and may involve clearing trails or roads, working a field to pay school expenses, working for a wealthy rancher to earn money for the treasury, weeding the schoolyard, or making repairs to school buildings.  Participation in the faena indicates that a person is a member of the community in good standing.

Most social control is effectively handled within the community by means of gossip, accusations of sorcery, and threat of ostracism.  More serious offenses often result in the person having to leave the community for indefinite periods.  In serious cases, local authorities may bring the offender to officials of the municipio for trial and punishment.

Disputes over access to resources, especially land, are a common feature of many Nahua communities.  Community members may band together in the face of external threats, but unsettled internal conflicts inevitably surface.  Factions usually form along kinship lines and if violence erupts, entire extended families may be forced to leave the community (Taggart 2007, 2008).

Nahua religious beliefs are generally a blend of Native American traditions with Spanish Catholicism.  Increasingly, this mixed religion is being replaced by beliefs from different sects of North American Protestantism.  However, even in areas where Christian ideology appears to prevail, beliefs tracing to pre-Hispanic practices often remain strong.  In some cases, the ancient system survives in folk beliefs and practices.  The sun is often syncretized with Jesus Christ and is viewed as a remote deity removed from daily affairs.  The moon-related Virgin of Guadalupe, a manifestation of the pre-Hispanic earth and fertility deity Tonantzin, is widely venerated.  Among less-acculturated Nahua, the pantheon incorporates a complex array of spirits representing manifestations of a unified sacred universe: earth spirits associated with death and fertility, water spirits that distribute rain and provide fish, and celestial spirits that watch over people and also provide rain.  Many Nahua believe that each person has an animal companion spirit whose fate parallels that of the person.  Myths told today in Nahua communities can often be linked to 16th-century narrations recorded by Spaniards.  A common theme is that excessive emotion or actions can be dangerous and that moderation in behavior is the ideal (Burkhart 1989).  Often pre-Hispanic spirits are combined with Christian figures, for example Tlaloc, an ancient rain deity, is sometimes merged with San Juan (Saint John).  A complex sacred geography is associated with mountains, springs, caves, lakes, rivers or arroyos, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean.  More acculturated communities may have a cult surrounding the saints.  A significant religious development of the 1970s and 1980s was the conversion of increasing numbers of Nahua by North American fundamentalist Protestant missionaries.

In more traditional Nahua communities the primary ritual specialist is a type of shaman-priest who receives power through dreams or miraculous recovery from an illness.  Often called a tlamatiquetl ("person of knowledge"), this specialist may be either male or female.  These specialists are able to make direct contact with spirits and sometimes act in a priestly role organizing community-wide events.  Much of their activity surrounds curing and they must undergo an apprenticeship under a master before practicing on their own.  Other specialists include midwives, bonesetters, and diviners who fulfill some religious functions.  More acculturated communities with a stronger Catholic influence may have catechists and prayer leaders.  Few smaller Nahua communities support a full-time priest.  With the increasing influence of Protestantism, some Nahua have become lay pastors.

The Nahua have a rich ceremonial life that is partly synchronized with the Catholic liturgical calendar.  Major ceremonies may include a winter solstice ritual devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe (Tonantzin), planting and harvest ceremonies, and important commemorations of underworld spirits at Carnaval in the early spring and on Day of the Dead in the autumn.  Noncalendrical observances include curing and disease-prevention rituals, ceremonies to control rain, pilgrimages to sacred places, ceremonial washing of newborn infants, the creation of ritual kinship ties, house blessings, divinations, and funerals.

Many Nahua do not recognize artistic expression as a separate sphere of activity.  Women take pride in creating beautiful colorful embroidered blouses and well-made clothing for their family.  However, purchased clothing has become more common in all Nahua communities.  Women also make pottery for use in the household.  Men may weave baskets, make furniture, construct fishing weirs, make beeswax candles, or engage in woodworking.  In less-acculturated communities men fashion headdresses from bamboo strips, mirrors, ribbons, and folded paper for use in dances.  Men also play musical instruments including guitar and violin and they are most likely to be storytellers.  Among the Huasteca Nahua, shaman-priests cut paper images of spirits and decorative sheets to adorn elaborate and beautiful altars.  In Guerrero, many Nahua are involved in amate painting for the tourist industry, which in the eyes of experts has reached the level of fine art in some cases.

Most Nahua have access to modern medicine and medical doctors through hospitals in the cities or small clinics in rural areas established by the Mexican government.  Alongside modern biomedical specialists, many Nahua rely on herbalists to treat symptoms of disease, bonesetting specialists who practice massage, and midwives in attendance at births.  These more pragmatic measures may be supplemented by elaborate symbolic-healing procedures orchestrated by shaman-priests.  In many cases, patients sponsor a divination to determine the cause of a malady.  The use of cut-paper figures to represent disease-causing wind spirits is characteristic of curing rituals held by Nahua of the southern Huasteca region.  People often seek these types of home remedy before consulting with a Western-trained medical specialist.

Beliefs in the afterlife are undergoing transition under influences from the Hispanically dominated culture and late 20th-century Protestant proselytizing.  In less acculturated communities the fate of the soul is linked to the circumstances of death rather than being conceived as a reward or punishment for behavior.  In these communities, children who die before acquiring speech become angelitos ("little angels") who may be reborn.  Those who die an unpleasant or premature death may wander among the living spreading disease and death.  People who die from water-related causes may go to a kind of paradise and reside with the water spirit.  In communities that are more acculturated, people increasingly embrace Christian ideas about death and the afterlife.

This culture summary was written for eHRAF World Cultures by Alan R. Sandstrom in October 2008. Teferi Abate Adem wrote the synopsis and indexing notes in November 2008.  

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