| Month's Details for: February 2001 |
by Gerry Gutierrez
North American Indians have inhabited the Y–shaped valley of Oaxaca for thousands of years. The rugged Oaxaca Valley of southern Mexico has been prized and fought over many times. The fertile lowlands receive topsoil from the surrounding mountains, and are watered by rushing streams, which merge and become the Atoyac River. This is good farmland.
The first inhabitants were the early Zapoteco tribes, who established an empire that covered much of the state of Oaxaca long before the time of Christ. After several thousand years, the Mixteca Indians became dominant in the Oaxaca valley and to the north. These civilizations created magnificent temples and cities such as Monte Alban, whose ruins draw thousands of tourists annually. The Aztec Empire expanded to dominate Oaxaca in 1440, only to be displaced by the Spanish conquistadors.
The pre-Hispanic cultures remain to this day in Oaxaca, although covered with a veneer of Spanish civilization. Each of the seven regions of the state retains the clothing, industry, houses, dances, and languages typical of the local Indians. The Indians of Oaxaca are organized in tribes such as the Zapoteco, Amuzgo, or Mixe. There are 14 major tribes, which in turn are divided by dialects, whose speakers do not understand each other. There are over 50 dialects of Zapoteco and of Mixteca, and at least three of most of the other groups for a total of 150 distinct ethnic groups. This diversity of ethnic groups is unmatched in all of the Americas.
These Indians had a rich economic, social, political and spiritual life long before the arrival of the Spanish. Agriculture formed the basis of the economy, from the fertile valleys to the terraced mountains. Corn, beans, and squash were all planted in the same field as companion crops. Coffee, flowers, sugar cane, tropical fruits, and chilies also flourished in Oaxaca. The market system of Oaxaca, thousands of years old, ensured the circulation of goods from small towns into the larger cities over the ancient “royal roads.” The main market covered many blocks and was a colorful collection of sights, smells, and tastes. The Indians were and are master craftsmen, making useful articles out of palm, straw, wood, wool, clay, leather, tin, gold, and rock.
The Indian Religion
Oaxaca under Spanish Rule
The Spaniards also raped and impregnated the Indian women, producing a mixed race of people known as mestizos, rejected by their fathers and despised by their Indian relatives.
The Spanish conquistadors were accompanied by the religious orders. The Dominicans, responsible to evangelize the Oaxacan Indians, arrived in 1528. They began by destroying the pagan temples and erecting cathedrals in their place, often with the same stones. They baptized up to 10,000 people at a time in the Roman Catholic faith. Although a few Dominicans learned Mixteca or Zapoteco to indoctrinate the new converts, most of the liturgy remained in Latin for the next 400 years, as unintelligible to the Indians as Spanish. The Indians changed the names of their pagan idols for “Christian” saints’ names. For example, the Tonanztin or mother goddess eventually became the Virgin of Guadalupe. The chaplain of Emperor Maximilian in the 1800s commented, “Mexican Christianity was and has always been a baptized paganism.” This mixture of paganism and Christianity was called syncretism or Christopaganism, and permeates the Mexican religious system to this day.
Protestant Work in Oaxaca
Wycliffe Bible Translators arrived in Oaxaca in the ‘40s, and by 1950 they had begun producing Scripture in the Indian languages. There are New Testaments in print for over 50 Oaxacan dialects and portions in another 50 dialects. Buenas Nuevas (Gospel Recordings) has been working among the Oaxacan tribes for over 40 years, and has recordings in 145 of the languages. YWAM has a base in Oaxaca, which has done extensive investigation among the tribes, producing prayer guides and people profiles. The JESUS Film has been dubbed into 36 dialects of Oaxaca. There are also branches of the Bible League, MAF, and other para-church organizations working among the Native Americans. In the last 50 years the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses have also penetrated Oaxaca, working mostly in Spanish but garnering numerous converts.
Oaxaca Today
There is a tremendous battle being waged for the souls of the Indians. God is redeeming thousands of Indians from the bonds of idolatry, witchcraft, and superstitions, which have oppressed them for centuries. Join with us in prayer for the unreached groups of Oaxaca.
PRAYER POINTS:
The Indians had an intricate religious system before the conquest. They believed in a cosmos in which the natural and supernatural intermingled, and in magical places which allowed beings to pass from one realm to another. They worshiped the spirits of the rain, corn, springs, flowers, war, and many others. These spirits had to be placated when angry and supplicated for the good they could give. They worshiped idols made of wood and stone in caves or high places. Some common religious practices were prayers, burning incense, singing and dancing, baptisms, fasting, divination, use of hallucinatory mushrooms, confession and penances, and self-sacrifices such as mutilation of the tongue and genitals. They believed that each person had an animal spirit that accompanied it, called the tona (see day 12).
Activities which were disruptive to community life were considered harmful; such as anger, envy, adultery, robbery, drunkenness, and disobedience to authority. The individual counted for very little. What mattered was the will of the community and the unity of the group. Each village was autonomous, governed by a council of elders elected in a town meeting. There was no distinction between the civic and religious functions, since both were considered community service.
In 1522, two years after the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, a group of Spanish soldiers came to Oaxaca. The population at that time was between one and a half and two million Indians. During the following 50 years the population decreased by over 50 percent due to losses in battle, slavery, and worst of all, diseases like measles, whooping cough, and diptheria, to which the Indians had no immunity.
In the late 1500s the inquisition was instituted in Oaxaca to eradicate the remaining idolaters among the Mixteca and Zapoteco Indians. In spite of the Protestant revolution in Europe, the Spanish Roman Catholic orders kept Mexico sealed against any Protestant influence for 350 years. By the end of this colonial period, the Catholic Church, owning half of the Mexican lands and goods, totally dominated the government, education, and commerce.
It wasn’t until 1850 that the first Bibles trickled into the country, brought by invading French (Hugenot) and American soldiers. President Benito Juarez, a Zapoteco Indian, passed laws to limit the power of the Roman Catholic Church. By 1857 there was an Evangelical Society which met in Oaxaca for Bible study. The Methodists who arrived in 1872 discovered entire families studying the Bible in Spanish, and these formed the nucleus of the first evangelical church in Oaxaca. Presbyterians had a strong presence in Oaxaca by 1900, and the Baptists arrived in 1934. The Pentecostals arrived in 1955 and are now the fastest growing denomination in the state.
Oaxaca now has three million inhabitants, of whom one million are Indians. Mexico’s federal government has granted political autonomy to the Oaxacan tribes. The main economic activities are agriculture, tourism, crafts, and the drug trade. There is a large population of foreigners who live here for months at a time, and many more who come to enjoy the colonial architecture and ruins, and purchase the crafts produced by the Indians.
