indios santos y nación

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University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States

Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico

Indian Saints and Nation-States: Ignacio Manuel Altamirano's Landscapes and LegendsAuthor(s): Edward N. Wright-RiosSource: Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 47-68Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for Mexicoand the United States and the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico

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Indian Saints and Nation-States: Ignacio ManuelAltamirano's Landscapes and LegendsEdwardN. Wright-Rios*

University of California, San Diego

Analyzing the costumbrista sketches of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano as a singlemulti-faceted work, and comparing his treatment of popular Catholicism in dif-ferent communities, this study represents a new reading of the author's writ-ings. Itproposes thatAltamirano'suxtaposition of religion and modernity acrossurban-ruraland ethnic continua reveals the author exploring the possibilities ofIndian-centered nationalism rooted in what he describes as the innately Amer-ican, independent spirit of ruralindigenous Catholic practice. In short, camou-flaged in a traditional, eclectic genre, Altamirano identified the foundations ofthe national character in Indianpopular religion long before twentieth-centuryindigenismo looked to contemporary Native American culture for inspiration.Al analizar os cuadros costumbristas de Ignacio Manuel Altamiranoen conjuntoy comparar su tratamiento del catolicismo popular en distintas comunidades,este estudio representa una nueva aproximacion a la obra del autor. Se proponeque la yuxtaposici6n de religi6n y modernidad en distintos entornos sociales-por un lado hispano, mestizo y urbano;y por otro, indigena y rural-revela a unautor que identifica los cimientos de lo mexicano en lo que el describe comoun espiritu indomablemente americano e independiente en la practica cat61icade los indios de su pueblo natal. En fin, avalaindosede un genero tradicional yeclectico, Altamiranoidentific6 la fundaci6n de un caracternacional en las tradi-ciones populares indigenas, mucho antes de que lo hiciera el indigenismo delsiglo XX.

One of the key figures of nineteenth-century Mexican nation buildingis Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (1834-1893). Rising from humble, Indianorigins to become a celebrated literary figure, historian, military hero,*This article is dedicated to Enrique Pupo-Walker.Mexican Studies/EstudiosMexicanos Vol.no. 20(1), Winter2004, pages 000-000. ISSN7429797 ? 2004Regents of the University of California.All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to:Rightsand Permissions, Universityof CaliforniaPress, 2000 Center St., Berkeley,CA94704-122347


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48 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanoscongressman, and Supreme Courtjustice qualified him as a living modelof the modern liberal man. He was apuro, a radical liberal renownedforhis commitment to the absolute defeat of conservatism in battle, pol-itics, and thought. He distinguished himself as a politician and publicservant, but his true legacy resides in his path-breaking role in shapingthe liberal, nationalist, cultural discourse that continues to reverberatein Mexican thought. Whereas it is impossible to do justice to his vastand diverse literary corpus in a brief essay, this article purports to shednew light on this author's often overlooked sketches of customs and man-ners (cuadros costumbristas).1 These unique works sound an off-keynote amidst the histories, opinion journalism, speeches, and romanticfiction that conform more closely to his political reputation. Insteadtheyrevealan obsessive, complex analysisof nineteenth-century popular cul-ture and its relationship to the European-inspiredconception of the sec-ular,rationalist,modern nation-state.Above all,Altamiranograpples withthe enduring socio-cultural importance of Catholic practice at all levelsof Mexican society, and searches for an authentic, national characterwithin indigenous religious traditions.These works are important for two primaryreasons:they areamongthe best descriptions of popular religious practice during the nineteenthcentury; and they also reveal one of the period's great Mexican intel-lectuals constructing modern Mexican nationalism with seemingly un-modern ingredients. Patterns and tensions within Altamirano'scompi-lation of these essays, Paisajes y leyendas: Costumbres y tradiciones deMexico, demonstrate that he, like other Latin American authors of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, embedded a counter-modern nar-rativealongside the championing of the ideals and values of modernity.2Within this ambivalent treatment of modernity, he went beyond the sim-ple portrayalof popular customs, and forwarded a precocious brand ofindigenismo thatpresented nineteenth-century Indianreligious festivalsas showcases of authentic Mexicaness, and an innate liberalism.3

1. Throughout this essay I have used a recent edition of Altamirano's customs andmanners sketches, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Obras completas: textos costumbristas,vol. 5, ed. Jose Joaquin Blanco (Mexico: SEP,1986). Individualsketches are cited by title.2. Myanalysisof Altamirano's reatment of modernity is inspired by CarlosJ. Alonso,The Burden ofModernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Spanish America (NewYork:Oxford University Press, 1998).3. For a discussion of Indian-centered nationalism in the twentieth century akin toAltamirano's,see Alexander S. Dawson, "FromModels for the Nation to Model Citizens:'Indigenismo'and the 'Revindication'of the Mexican Indian, 1920-1940,"Journal ofLatinAmerican Studies 30, no. 2 (1998): 279-99. Other Mexican writers before Altamiranospoke of the greatness of pre-Columbiancivilizations, but Altamiranois unique in his em-phasis on popular Catholic practice in contemporary Indian communities as a source ofnational values.


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Wright-Rios: Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 49It is crucial to distinguish Altamirano's sketches of customs and man-ners from his fiction, as did the author himself. He stated,

The novel is the book of the masses. Other studies stripped of the trappings ofthe imagination, and hence undoubtedly better, are reserved for a more intelli-gent and fortunate circle, which does not need fables and poetry in order to de-rive from them the desired benefit. Perhaps the novel is called to open the wayfor the poorer classes, so that they may rise to the level of the privileged circleand become indistinguishable from it. Perhaps the novel is nothing more thanthe initiation of the people in the mysteries of modern civilization, and the grad-ual instruction that is given to the priesthood of the future.4This statement captures his sense that the novel was both the liberal mod-ernizer's catechism, and the mold of a hoped-for classless Mexico.Modernity, like religion, he suggests, had its "mysteries" that must be dis-covered by the intellectual elite and revealed to the masses. Further onhe asserted that in the absence of a truly egalitarian system of universaleducation, fiction remained a crucial link between pensador (thinker/philosopher) and pueblo. He trod gently on his bridge between intel-lectuals and the masses, producing sentimental, nationalist stories, usu-ally set during the Wars of the Reform, and steeped in simplified liber-alism. His historical works complement his fiction. They demonstratean attempt to forge a collective, Mexican memory of the past, and es-tablish a firm historiographical link between the liberals of the Reformand the Hidalgo Revolt of 1810.5Altamirano's cuadros are among the "other studies" that he assertedwere for the more privileged intellectual elite that could stomach un-varnished truths. In them he says he must adhere to reality and the "proseof everyday life."6 What he does not say is that the customs and man-ners sketch also provided him with an unthreatening, traditional mediumin which he could explore new ideas that did not always match his po-litical reputation. Costumbrismo is a slippery, eclectic genre of infa-mously uneven quality combining journalism, satire, autobiography, fic-

4. Ignacio ManuelAltamirano,"Laiteraturaen 1870: La novela mexicana," n Obrascompletas:.escritosde literaturay arte, vol. 12, ed.Jose LuisMartinez(Mexico: SEP,1986),230-6. All translations unless otherwise noted are mine, and original Spanish quotationsare included in these notes. "La novela es el libro de las masas. Los demds estudiosdesnudos del atavio de la imaginaci6n, y mejores por eso, sin disputa, estdn reserva-dos a un circulo mds inteligente y maisdichoso, porque no tiene necesidad de fdbulasy de poesia para sacar de ellas el provecho que desea. Quizds la novela estdc amadaa abrir el camino a las clasespobres, para que lleguen a la altura de este circulo privi-legiado y se confundan con 6l."5. Nicole Gir6n, "Ignacio Manuel Altamirano,"in Historiografia Mexicana: enbusca de un discurso integrador de la naci6n, 1848-1884, ed. Antonia Pi-SufierLlorens(Mexico: UNAM, 1996), 257-94.6. Altamirano,La vida en Mexico, 79-87.


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50 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanostion, and history. Rooted in early nineteenth-century Spanishmodels, itfeatures detailed descriptions of local color, nostalgic recollection of pasttraditions, a flare for the picturesque, and a tendency to focus on theseemingly trivial aspects of daily life. In Latin America societies oftenlacking political and expressive freedoms, costumbrismo's nature as agenre dedicated to microscopic social analysisoffered authors aplatformfor the discussion of power relations, as well as social, cultural, and eco-nomic divisions. Manycostumbristas were alsoprominent journalistsandpolitical leaders who imbued their works with ideological contentwhile employing the customs and manners sketch to explore nationalthemes and critique what they perceived as their nation's failings. Thus,the cuadro often functioned as a pressure valve of dissent, an outlet forsocial commentary, and the introductory medium of new political andsocial ideas.7Altamirano'ssketches are well within this tradition,yet they are es-pecially interesting due to their author's own social, cultural, and eco-nomic journey from his Nahuatl-speaking,rural,Indianyouth to the hallsof power and recognition as one of the Restored Republic's most cele-brated intellectuals. In the early 1880s he contributed a number ofcuadros to Mexico City newspapers, and in 1884 at the urging of hisfriends he edited and republished many of them in a single volume.(Other sketches were republished posthumously.) An issue for contem-poraryscholars is, what does this famous radicalliberalof Indiandescentintend to convey in his rambling examination of the nation's popularculture, and what does he reveal about Mexico's social and political evo-lution in the late nineteenth century? The results have been mixed. Es-says from Paisajesy leyendas have led to claims that they reveal the au-thor as a pragmatist devoted to national reconciliation, a shamelessbooster of Porfirianprogress and denigrator of established popular tra-dition, an early proponent of the misguided cultural analysis of Mexicoaccording to euro-centric criteria, or a cowed radical recognizing theunbridgeable gulf between the liberal, progress-oriented, secular statehe helped to build, and Mexico's deeply religious Catholic population.8These conflicting claims emerge from Altamirano'sobsessive juxta-position of modernity and popular Catholicism throughout Paisajes y

7. EnriquePupo-Walker,"TheBrief Narrative n SpanishAmerica,"inTheCambridgeHistory of Latin American Literature, vol. 1, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walkerand RobertoGonzalez Echevarria(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), 490-535.8. These divergent analyses are respectively from Chris Nacci, Ignacio Manuel Al-tamirano (New York:TwaynePublishersInc., 1970);JoseJoaquinBlanco, "Introducci6n,"in Ignacio Manuel Altamirano,Obras completas : textos costumbristas, vol. 5, ed. JoseJoaquin Blanco (Mexico: SEP,1986), 9-18; Nicole Gir6n, "La dea de 'cultura nacional' enel siglo XIX:Altamiranoy Ramirez,"n En torno a la cultura nacional (Mexico: INI, 1976),


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 51leyendas. Altamirano'sgoal in writing these sketches was to explorethe past and the present for culturalcornerstones upon which to build atrulyliberal society, but that seems only to have been part of his project.His essays rummage through Mexican history and the author's own ex-periences as an observer of Mexican culture, and reveal him honestlypondering the evidence. He does much more than simply judge cus-toms and cast those considered retrograde beneath the wheels of theon-coming train of progress. The typical cuadro revolves around the au-thor's journey to a popular festival. He summarizes and critiques theevent's history and describes its evolution in his own lifetime beforecommenting on the current celebration. Frequentlyhis mode of transpor-tation is the railroadwhich allows him to use this modern innovation asthe fulcrum of his discussion of past, present, and future.Altamiranoweighs what he has seen and read and describes a com-plex interplay of old and new, subjecting both to close scrutiny.His po-litical and social ideology tinges his analysis, but does not overly cloudhis observations. He examines the problematic coexistence of moder-nity and tradition,but does not leave the reader with the impression thathe has solved the puzzle. These essays are not about the triumph ofprogress and individual initiative. At times he predicts great improve-ments to come and lashes out at ignorant superstitions, but it is the hy-brid, increasingly stratified, commercial culture of Mexico's towns andcities that serves as the focus of his most critical commentary. Hencemestizos and the outward-looking rich are subject to his scorn, and de-spite the hope he pins on the steam locomotive, the rural, the indige-nous, and some enduring colonial traditions win his respect.The tendency of costumbrismo's practitioners to slip back and forthbetween fiction, memoir, history, and journalism makes it problematicto analyzeas historical documentation or literature.A satisfying synthesisAltamirano'scuadros must be rooted in their placement within Mexico'slate nineteenth-century discursive climate, and the comparative analy-sis of sketches. In The Burden of Modernity Carlos Alonso notes thatSpanish American writers of the last two centuries developed an am-

53-81; and David A. Brading,The First America: TheSpanish Monarchy, CreolePatriots,and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),648-74. Of these authors only Blanco approaches Altamirano'scollection of cuadros as awhole, but his analysis is disappointingly superficial. When Altamirano lauds aspects ofindigenous popular religion, he accuses him of indulging in literaryexcess, andwhen theauthor criticizes traditional practices, Blanco asserts that he is flailing at Mexico's past.Brading taps into Paisajes y leyendas in his deep, insightful analysis of Creole patriotismand the foundations of Mexican nationalism. Brading'sis by far the best of these studiesand has been very influential in my analysis,but all of these scholars miss the deeper pat-terns beneath Altamirano's uxtaposition of tradition and modernity.


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52 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosbivalent relationship with modernity.9Eschewing claims that these au-thors were unable to fully grasp modern discourse, he maintains thatthey recognized the clash between Europeanconcepts of the nation-staterooted in a sharedethno-culturalpast and notions of progress and moder-nity,andAmericanhistorical,economic, and social realities. To surmountthis disjunction they crafted a contradictory, but ultimately useful, na-tionalist discourse built upon the projection of a truly modern nation atsome point in the undefined future, which they proposed would some-how emerge from the anti-modern raw materials of the present. Whilediscussing a broad range of authors, Alonso adds that LatinAmericans'twin obsessions of keeping up with the latest modern developments inEuropeandcarefullydocumenting local realities, "servedfirstto measurethe distance still to be traveled to become modern, but they also helpedto identify and master the most effective strategies for never leavinghome."10Hence, we can view tensions between progress and traditionin Altamirano'scostumbrismo as part of a process of negotiated change,in which he, like his contemporaries, availed himself of modernity's au-thority, but also kept it at bay.The term "measure"s particularlyappropriate. Paisajes y leyendascaptures Altamiranoassessing Mexican religious practice. The collectionis a collage of the author's thoughts on popular culture, and reveals himtinkering with the pieces of a new, nationalist ideology. It is full of ten-sion between the realist'sportrayalof the traditions that he intimates hispeople should leave behind, and the nationalist's quest for the authen-tic foundations of the Mexican "folk."On the surface he seems contra-dictory, but a close examination of the concert of essays reveals a largercoherence. The key to understanding Paisajes y leyendas is to scruti-nize Altamirano'sdepiction of Mexican popular Catholicism throughouthis multi-leveled discussion of tradition and modernity. Three inter-secting planes of this discussion emerge in Altamirano'sjuxtapositionof Mexico's cultural settings: urban and rural,present and past, and hy-brid and Indian. To highlight the importance of these conceptual con-tinuawithin his costumbrismo, I analyze the sketches in relation to theirdistance from the metropolis: Mexico City and environs; towns near thecapital;villages in the mountains surrounding the capital;and the Indiancommunity of the author's birth. As essays move from the capital to thedistant village of his youth, Altamiranoalso transports the reader fromthe present to the past, and from the mestizo milieu of cities and townsto the idealized Indian culture of his native, ruralvillage. As his settingsbecome more rural and more Indian, his characterization of popular re-

9. Alonso, Burden of Modernity.10. Ibid., vi.


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 53ligion becomes more sympathetic. Following the author on this literaryjourney through space and time reveals that he was doing much morethan simply advocating reconciliation, trumpeting progress, or wring-ing his hands over the weak foundations of the liberal state. Nestling hisideas in descriptive exuberance, and perhaps with trepidation, he sug-gests that Mexico's ruralIndians,steeped in their own syncretic religioustraditions, are the primary source of the authentic national culture. Hesoft-pedals their heterodox, propitiatory, practices, and instead cele-brates their originality, innate independent spirit, and Americaness.

From Tixtla to Mexico City: Altamirano's Personal JourneyBy analyzingPaisajes y leyendas in relation to its settings, I am also re-versing Altamirano'spersonal journey from his native Guerrero to themetropolis. Indeed, one way to look at his costumbrismo is that it rep-resents an intellectual homecoming. Altamiranowas born November 13,1834 in the Nahua village of Tixtla."1The son of Nahuatl-speakingpar-ents, he studied, wrote, and fought his way to Mexico City.His father'selection as mayorof Tixtlagained him entrance into elementary school,and in 1849 he won a government-sponsored scholarship for Indiansto the Instituto Literario de Toluca. There he became a disciple of theradical-liberalIgnacio Ramirez.12 Throughout much of the 1850s and1860s, Mexico's political turbulence shaped Altamirano's ife. Periods ofliberal rule offered him the opportunity to further his education as alawyer and burnish his reputation as a leading light in the capital's cir-cles of radical ntellectual ferment. Conservative governments drove himback to the liberal armies of Guerrero and opposition journalism.13With the liberalvictory in 1867, Altamiranodefinitively returned toMexico City.At the age of 33 he was both a decorated colonel who en-joyed battle-hardened friendships with the highly regarded generals Vi-cente RivaPalacio andPorfirioDiaz,and apolitician/journalistrenownedfor his uncompromising radicalism. He became attorney general briefly,and won election to the Supreme Court. But his prestige as a thinker,journalist, and jurist did not guarantee him a prominent role in gover-nance. Within the faction-ridden Restored Republic Altamirano repre-sented a vociferous out-faction which, due to its public clash with presi-dent Benito Judirez,had little prospect of wielding power and shapingthe state. Since the early 1860s Altamirano and his mentor Ramirez es-

11. Gir6n, "IgnacioManuelAltamirano."12. Harvey L. Johnson, "Introduction," n Christmas in the Mountains, IgnacioManuel Altamirano(Gainsville:University of FloridaPress, 1961), ix-xix.13. Gir6n, "Ignacio Manuel Altamirano" and Nacci, Altamirano.


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54 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanostablished themselves as the journalistic voice of opposition to Juarez'senduringpolitical ambitions.Instead,they supported the Diazcandidacy.Juarez's ability to retain the presidency initiated Altamirano's disen-chantment with politics and the democratic process in Mexico and was,perhaps, the impetus behind his increasing literaryefforts. Ironically,dur-ing the Diaz administrationsof the late 1870s and 1880s the puros wouldbe politically outflanked again, but this time by the rising stars of "sci-entific politics"within the Diaz regime.'4Altamirano's iction and his attempts to midwife an authentic Mex-ican literature emerged after 1867. In 1868 he published his first liter-ary reviews and organized a series of high-profile readings (veladas) inprivate homes featuring many of Mexico's most famous writers. Hisfounding of the literary magazine El Renacimiento in 1869 initiated aMexican literaryflorescence including writers from across the politicalspectrum. The magazine lasted only a year, but it established him as thementor and promoter of a generation of writers. In his own fiction Al-tamirano strove to produce nationalist epics. 15Throughout this periodhe also contributed numerous articles and essays to the nation's peri-odicals. He is not remembered as a gifted novelist. Above all, his fictionwas a conduit of literary technique and style. His novels incorporatedRomanticism into the Mexican literary tradition and paved the way to-wards LatinAmerican modernismo.16 His shorter works are among themost important predecessors of the renowned twentieth-century Mex-ican short story." AsJose Joaquin Blanco said, "He did not leave a mas-ter work: he prepared the possibility of master works."18Nonetheless,if Altamirano'swritings fail to impress today's literary critics, they arestill of value in our attempts to understand nineteenth-century Mexico.

Religion in the Metropolis: An Affront to ModernityIn Paisajes y leyendas Altamirano laments that modernity reveals itselffully only in a small swatch of 1880s Mexico City,from the central plaza14. Gir6n, "IgnacioManuelAltamirano."15. His novels are Clemencia (1869), Julia (1870), La Navidad en las montafias

(1871), Antonia (1872), andElZarco (1888). His historical works include Revista hist6ricaypolitica, 1821-1882 (1882), and biographies of Ramirez(1889) and Hidalgo(1890).16. Antonio Benitez-Rojo,"TheNineteenth-CenturySpanishAmericanNovel," n TheCambridge History of Latin American Literature, vol. 1, ed. EnriquePupo-WalkerandRoberto Gonzilez Echevarria(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996), 417-89.17. Pupo-Walker,"BriefNarrative."18. Blanco, "Introducci6n,"17. "No dej6 obra maestra:prepar6 la posibilidad deobras maestras."


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Wright-Rios:ltamirano'sLandscapesand Legends 55to the west. Despite his discomfort with the nation's backwardness, hefelt it was his duty to examine it honestly and in detail. In fact, he lam-bastes others for avoidingthe "M&xico ctual."19Reviewing the capital'stheater scene, he scorns the mindless zarzuelas and traditionalSpanishrepertoire that dominate the elite theaters. Instead, he praises the savagebeauty of costumbrista puppet productions at lowly "teatritoAmerica."Altamirano auds their rendition of an Indian religious festival, stressingthe authenticity of the costumes, manners, music, and devotional activ-ities.20In much of Paisajes y leyendas he assumes the dual role of real-ist puppeteer and culture critic. In almost every essay the author exam-ines some aspect of popular Catholicism. His criticism of these customsis especially strident when they take place near Mexico City, yet it is anuanced attack on religion. Mestizo and elite religious activities elicit un-mitigatedcaustic censure, whereas devout traditions n poor Indianneigh-borhoods inspire a degree of understanding and compassion.Altamirano'scontempt for religion is most obvious in two sketchesdealing with the Day of the Dead, El dia de muertos and Los inmor-tales.21In the former he compares festivities in both poor and wealthycemeteries and laments endurance of these traditions across the socialspectrum despite the Reform laws. For the city's "high-life,"he festivalrepresents an opportunity for competitive display,and among the poorit is an excuse to indulge in disorder as the melancholy commemorationof the dead mutates into atuneless songfest, drunken brawling, and scan-dalous public passions. 22 In Los inmortales he mocks belief in the af-terlife by claiming to have spent Day of the Dead in a cemetery com-muning with dead fellow radicals. Melchor Ocampo's ghost delivers ablistering condemnation of the holiday as a marriage of clerical greedand bourgeois ostentation, and Vicente Guerrero lectures a crowd onthe immortality of ideas.23

Altamirano broadens his diatribe against urban, religious festivalsin Las tres caidas de Tacuba. Here he accuses the clergy of exploitingthe population's ignorance, festive proclivities, and weakness for pag-eantry merely to generate revenue. Thankfully, he asserts, state au-thorities in the 1880s had belatedly begun to enforce constitutional pro-hibitions against public religious expression and curtail "thisspectacle

19. Altamirano,La vida en MWxico, 9-87.20. Altamirano,Los especteculos, 87-91.21. Altamirano,El dia de muertos, 101-7; and Los inmortales, 107-14. See also Elotofio y las fiestas de noviembre, 93-9.22. Altamirano,El dia de muertos, 101-7.23. Altamirano,Los inmortales, 107-14.


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56 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanoswhich has nothing in common with Christian religion and is an affrontto the culture of our century."24 Thus, he maintains, enduring popularCatholicism maligned both Christianity and modernity. In fact, a con-cern for "true" Christianity also emerges in his fiction. In the novel LaNavidad en las montafias (1871) he advocates a Christian spiritualityliberated from the baroque bad taste and semi-idolatrous veneration ofthe saints. For Altamirano, Christianity is nothing less than a sanctifiedliberalism that unites the book's characters in worship, civic morality,and progress. At one point in the story an enlightened priest says, "Ademocratic individual or a disciple of Jesus, isn't he perhaps the sameperson?"25

When he is searching for authenticity he moves beyond outright re-jection of religious festivals, explores the racial intricacies of Mexicanfolk practice, and softens his anti-religious stance. In Lafiesta de losAnge-les Altamirano offers a stinging comparison between one of the capital'sIndian barrio devotions (La Madona de los pobres, also known as LaVirgen de los Angeles) and the Virgin of Guadalupe.26 He criticizes theless-famous virgin's feast as an eight-day bacchanal involving forty pul-querias, 5,000 people, and usually resulting in a few deaths. But, heclaims, "Among orgies, this is worth more and costs less than the oneat la villa [the Basilica of Guadalupe].. ."27It is backward and disorderly,but, he mischievously notes, it is almost a secular affair due to the par-ticipants' focus on profane revelry. This humble, urban, Indian devotionhas a distinct, nationalist validity:She was not the accomplice of Cortes like Remedios, nor the hook of Zumai-rragalike Guadalupe;rather she was a daughter of the waters of Mexico, a cre-ation of the poor barrioartistsand the balm of Indianconverts, like a homespuninspiration, due to her painting upon the walls of the poor Toltec hovels. Weconfess that the avocation is charming:The Virgin of the Angels. The shrine isbeautiful although modest and decorated with good taste. We note with inti-mate pleasure the absence of retablos recounting stupid miracles.28

24. Altamirano,Las trescaidas de Tacuba, 331, "...este espectdculo que nada teniade comfdn con la religi6n cristiana y que desdecia de la cultura de nuestro siglo."25. Altamirano,Christmas in the Mountains, trans.HarveyL.Johnson (Gainesville:University of FloridaPress, 1961), 24.26. Altamirano,Lafiesta de los Angeles.27. Ibid., 69. "Orgiapor orgia, esta vale mds y cuesta menos que la de la villa."28. Ibid.,77-8. "Noera la c6mplice de Cortis como la de los Remedios, ni el anzuelode Zumdrraga como la Guadalupe, sino hija de las aguas de Mexico, creaci6n de po-brespintorzuelos de barrio y consuelo de los indios convertidos, algo como un numendel hogar,puesto que estaba pintada sobre los materiales de las pobres chozas tolte-cas. Confesamos que hasta la advocacidn es graciosa: La Virgende los Angeles. El tem-plo es bello aunque modesto y estd decorado con gusto. Notamos con intimo placer quealli no hay retablos con historias de milagros estdpidos."


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 57The Virginof the Angels, he claims, was the creation of her suffering In-dian devotees, inspired by their colonial-era hardships, and simply ren-dered on one of their abode-walled homes. She was neither the collab-orator of the cruel conquerors nor the ruse of a bishop seeking to trickthe natives with bogus apparitions. Here Altamirano draws his readers'attention to the more genuine, and hence more Mexican, nature of anIndian Catholic icon, even if he did not approve of its superstitious wor-ship or raucous celebration. On the contrary,he lauded the temple's rus-tic beauty and good taste, and suggested a more pure, less magic-basedChristianitythan her sister devotions. Implicitly,he tars the clergy as themercenary proponent of the miracle-obsessed popular Catholicism thathe finds repulsive. The people, he suggests, left to their own devotionalinstincts, prefer a simpler, more pure religion.

Leaving the City: Ideal Christianity and ProgressAltamirano's ritique of folk Catholicismin and around Mexico Cityis par-ticularlysevere. Forthe most parthe renders popular religion as agalleryof social ills: ignorance, disorder, ecclesiastical exploitation, backward-ness, andupper-class ostentation. The only hint of sympathyhe professesfor its practitioners is in his discussion of the Indian-barrioVirgin.As ev-ident inLafiesta de los Angeles he viewed Guadalupe'sdevotion, anotherreligious tradition nearthe nation'scapital,with the same disdain he heldforDayof the Deadpractices. Scholarsoften have overlooked Altamirano'sfierce criticism of the Virginof Guadalupe in this cuadro.29 nstead, theyemphasize the historiographical essay on guadalupanismo Altamiranoinserted among the costumbrista sketches collected in Paisajes y leyen-das, and rest their conclusions on the author'sremarkable tatement, "Theday that the virgin of Tepeyac ceases to be adored in this land it is cer-tain that not only will the Mexicannationalityhave disappeared, but eventhe memory of the inhabitants of Mexico will have vanished."30Chris

29. In Lafiesta de los Angeles, Altamirano s very sepecific in his preference for thepopular authenticity of this devotion compared to Guadalupeand others, 69: "Demosgra-cias al cielo de que la virgen de los Angeles no deba su aparici6n a la briboneria deun fraile y la estupidez de un indio, ni a la imaginaci6n histirica de una solterona,ni a lapropensi6n al embuste de una vieja. No:esta imagen tiene un origen lisoy llano,con algunas exageraciones que ha puesto la devoci6n, pero que no llegan hasta la su-percheria, ni descienden hasta la injuria contra el sentido comdn. La santa virgen deladobe, es hija de sus obras, no es su culpa, si el carifio id6latra de un viejo cacique, elcapricho de un sastrey lapasi6n por elpulque colorado, ban becho de ella una especiede Demeter mexicana, la buena diosa de los miserables, la protectora de un barrioileno de salitre, defango y de miseria."30. Altamirano,Lafiesta de Guadalupe, 241. "Eldia en que no se adore a la vir-gen del Tepeyacen esta tierra, es seguro que habrd desaparecido, no solo la naciona-


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58 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosNacci asserts that this reveals the author'sacceptance of the devotion asa means of national reconciliation.31David Bradingcites this quotationas proof of the secularist liberalnation-buildingproject's abject failure.32Indeed, it is difficult to square the contradiction between his harsh at-tack on the Guadalupedevotion in one essay, and his fusion of guadalu-panismo and Mexican identity in another. But, Altamirano's ncreasinglyentwined treatmentof popularreligionand liberalnationalism n the othersketches set beyond the capital shed considerable light on how the au-thor resolved, or managed, this tension.In sketches concerning communities within a few hours train ridefrom the capital, he assumes a distinct tone. In the metropolis he seemsmost concerned with the gulf separating the customs witnessed in ahandful of modern neighborhoods and those enduring amongst the restof the population. In Las tres caidas de Tacuba he physically traversesthis cultural continuum in his tram ride from the symbolic center of themodern capital, the Z6calo, to the city's anti-modern outskirts, epito-mized by Tacuba. In El Sen-ordel Sacromonte and Tetzcocoy Tetzcotz-inco he transports the reader by way of Mexico's newly expanded raillines beyond Mexico City'simmediate environs.33What is most strikingabout these essays is that they reveal Altamiranodistancing himself fromhis assault on Catholicism as he distances himself, and the reader, fromthe capital. He expands his discussion of "true"Christianitythrough his-torical digressions on the virtues of the first Franciscan missionaries. InEl Seflor del Sacromonte he goes as far as to portray a progressive syn-ergy between the popular religious celebrations of the indigenous poorand a glorious, modern future inaugurated by the arrivalof the railroadin Mexico's traditional communities.34lidad mexicana, sino hasta el recuerdo de los moradores del MWxico ctual."Altamiranostated in his preface to the original edition of Paisajes y leyendas that this essay had beeninserted into the 1884 collection of sketches in order to include something on the mostfamous Mexican devotion. It cannot be considered a customs and manners sketch. It is along survey of the previous centuries of scholarship on guadalupanismowithout his usualcommentary and critique of devotional practice. He does include a veiled criticism in hisclaim that Guadalupe had become a one-size-fits-all " virgen de consumo": orthodoxCatholics saw her as the Mother of God, liberals held her up as a symbol of struggle forIndependence, Indians worshiped her as a goddess, and other nations viewed her as akind of logo of the Mexican nation. See Altamirano, "Prefacio,"n Obras completas: tex-tos costumbristas, vol. 5, ed. Jose Joaquin Blanco (Mexico: SEP,1986), 21-22.31. Nacci, Altamirano, 101-17.

32. Brading,First America, 666-74.33. Altamirano, El Sefior del Sacromonte, 21-35; and Tetzcoco y Tetzcotzinco,275-310.34. In El Sefior del Sacromonte and Tetzcocoy Tetzcotzinco he portrays the firstFranciscan missionaries as archetypes of religious purity and the first messengers of civi-lization. They are the only elements of Spanish colonial rule of which he approves. Alta-


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 59In Tetzcocoy Tetzcotzinco, Altamirano emphasizes the deplorable

plight of Mexico's urban Indians.35He stresses Texcoco's greatness as apre-Hispanic center and sixteenth-century seat of missionary activity,but laments that intervening yearsof colonial suffocation andnineteenth-century violence have left the city a filthy shell of its former self. Suchis its decay that he wonders if the inhabitants are the true descendantsof its once-proud citizens, and he lashes out at its poisonous mixed-breedatrophy. "Tetzcoco now is hybrid, hybrid in its buildings, hybrid in itsinhabitants, hybrid in its customs, and hybrid in its physiognomy," hecarps.36As in Mexico City,he alleges, Spanish rule expunged allvestigesof indigenous culturalvitality, eaving only place names and ruins to echopre-Columbianandmissionary achievements. Afterhis bleak assessmentof urbanIndianlife, Altamirano offers only the railroadas the town's cul-turaland economic redeemer.37In ElSefior del Sacromonte Altamiranomakes a complete break withMexico'surbancenters andbegins to explore the value of contemporary,indigenous, religious activity.Abandoning the city mentally is preciselywhat he asks his readers to do in the opening paragraphs of the essay:Let us leave: et us look for othersketches of Mexican ife, the emotion of theunfamiliar;ndallow ourselves o be gentlyborneby flyingcloudsof the imagi-nation .. to visit the townsandvillagesand blend ourselveswith the intimatelife of the simple people who conservesomethingof the old customsand thepurity ypicalof the old provinces,barelyalteredby modernnecessity.38Thushe enjoins his readers to loosen their imaginations from the moor-ings of the capital's well-known customs in order to follow him in hismirano was not the first writer to put the Franciscans on a pedestal. His friend GuillermoPrieto also lauded them in the 1840s. Prieto is much more direct in his use of the ideal-ized missionaries to criticize clerics in the nineteenth century as the antithesis of Fran-ciscan spiritualand ethical purity.Altamirano avoids a direct negative comparison of con-temporaryandearly-colonial priests. Perhapsit was cliche by the 1880s, or readerssteepedin nineteenth-century journalistic tropes understood the mere mention of the first Fran-ciscans as a critique of the modern Church. See Guillermo Prieto, Cuadros de costumbres1:Obrascompletas, ed. Boris RosenJelomer,vol. 2 (Mexico: Consejo National Para a Cul-tura, 1993), 543-7.35. Altamirano, Tetzcocoy Tetzcotzinco.36. Ibid., 278. "La Tetzcoco actual es hibrida, bibrida por sus edificios, bibridapor sus babitantes, hibrida por sus costumbres, por su fisonomia."37. Altamirano,Tetzcocoy Tetzcotzinco.

38. Altamirano,El Sefior del Sacromonte, 21. "Salgamos:busquemos otros cuadrosde la vida mexicana, la emoci6n de lo desconocido; y dejdndonos llevar blandamentepor la nubecilla voladora de la imaginaci6n ... para visitar los pueblos y las aldeas ymezclarnos en la vida intima de las gentes sencillas que conservan algo de las viejascostumbresy lapureza tipica de la antiguaprovincia, apenas modificadapor las necesi-dades modernas."


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60 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosexamination of Mexico's traditionssheltered from change. He metaphor-ically introduces the interface between religion and modernization bybeginning his journey at Mexico City'snew SanLitzaro rain station. Hedescribes the neighborhood as a hell of poverty, ignorance, savagery,and disease, but with a ray of hope in a new savior-technologicalprogress. The railroad,he declares, will bring Mexico's Lazarusback tolife. The trainride south of the capital becomes Altamirano'smiracle nar-rative of modernization as he describes each town before and after thearrivalof the railsandpredicts advancingsalvationto the towns and coun-tryside beyond. Finally,his steam-drivenengine of civilization brings himto a Catholic shrine site, the Sacromonte in Amecameca. Here his dis-cussion of the miraculous potential of progress gives way to a discus-sion of the shrine's Franciscan founders, "the messengers of the en-lightenment, the true heroes of Latin American civilization."39

Sadlyhe notes that no collective memory of the Franciscans enduresamong the population. Instead, a popular legend of a miracle-workingimage of the buried Christ has supplanted their ascetic virtues and aus-tere civilizing faith with a Good Fridaycelebration drawing large num-bers of pilgrims every year. Despite his disappointment, Altamirano re-frains from savaging the festival of the Santo Entierro as he did itscounterparts in Mexico City.In fact, in El Sefior del Sacromonte he ap-pears to have internalized the positivist notion of religious festivals asan evolutionary stage of commercial progress.40 He notes that Ame-cameca's priests extract their fees from the festival, but he depicts themas valuablepromoters of the popular gathering and subsequent businesstransactions. He predicts that the celebration's strengthening of familyandcommunity bonds frayedby nineteenth-century revolutions will pro-vide the necessary environment for agriculturaland industrialdevelop-ment.41Thus,Altamirano inks religion and progress in his pitch for rail-roads,Franciscanhistory lesson, and exegesis of contemporary rural, olkCatholicism. The steam locomotive is but a new phase in the civilizingprocess inaugurated by the Franciscans. The steel rails physically andsymbolically connect the shrine site to the center of modern progressin the capital. But in Amecameca, the train is not enough. Altamiranoenvisions the village clergy playing a vital role in the rural moderniza-tion process. They, like the friars before them, are the conduits of civi-lized customs and facilitators of intercommunity commerce.

39. Altamirano,El Sefior del Sacromonte.40. In Los inmortales, while discussing religious practice in Mexico City, Altami-rano scoffs at the positivist claim that religious festivals represent a pre-industrialstage ofcommercial development. However, in El Seftor del Sacromonte, set in the countryside,he appears to concur with this aspect of positivist theory.41. Altamirano, El Senor del Sacromonte.


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Wright-Rios:ltamirano'sLandscapesand Legends 61Altamiranoemployed this utopian vision in La Navidad en las mon-tan-asas well. The novel features a priest, elected officials, and a soldier

working together to shepherd a mythical rural community towardprogress, order, and austere Christianity.Yet, curiously absent from LaNavidad en las montafias's imaginaryvillage are Mexico's Indians. Theauthor simply describes the inhabitants as rustic agriculturists. InPaisajesy leyendas he remedied this omission, but continued to envelophis positive portrayalof religion in the sentimental gauze of bucolic, time-less, village life.

TixtlaIt is surprising that modern scholars have not given more attention tothe two sketches devoted to Indian religious festivals in Altamirano'shometown, La Semana Santa en mipueblo and El Corpus.42They pro-vide detailed descriptions of little known mid-nineteenth-century Indianreligious practice from the pen of an acculturated Indian who had oncebeen a participant in the events. Hence, they are rich in the minutiaerelated to emotionally charged fiesta preparations, degrees of religiousbelief, ethnic identity, and community social organization. The author'sintimate knowledge of place and customs imbue these essays with amarked authenticity rarein costumbrista treatments of Indians. In bothessays Altamiranoemphasizes Indian religious autonomy and abandonshis admonishments of ignorance, disorderly conduct, drunkenness,waste, and clerical exploitation.In his introduction to Tixtla'sCorpus Christi celebration he divulgesthe reason for his interest in his hometown's Catholic festivals,It is the half idolatrous ndians,who exert themselvesto give it all the en-chantment hat theirpicturesquemagination anprovide hem,and thanks othem, the processionhas an originalandparticularlyAmerican haracter,heonlyreason hat makes t worthyof mention.43In other words, it is the autochthonous nature of Tixtla's folk Catholi-cism that gives it merit. It is this quality of genuine Mexicaness whichallows the author to describe catholic religiosity in a positive tone thatlacks the revulsion it inspired in some of his other sketches. Yet, Alta-mirano resorts to literary camouflage that places these events in thenebulous past or mythical present of his distant rural hamlet. His village

42. Altamirano,El Corpus, 55-65; and La Semana Santa en mipueblo, 37-54.43. Altamirano,El Corpus, 58. " .. son los indigenas medio id6latras, quines se es-meran en darle todo el encanto que su imaginaci6n pintoresca puede sugerirles, ymerced a ellos, laprocesi6n tiene un cardcter original ypeculiarmente americano, tnicolado que la hace digna de menci6n."


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62 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosremains unvisited by the steam engines. It is the author's memory, notmodern machinery, that guides the reader to Indian Mexico.

In El Corpus Altamirano assumes a voice of mischievous, nativistglorification. As if divulging a secret, he notes that Tixtla's Corpus is thesole public, religious festival in the village that has endured the ReformLaws unchanged since his childhood. But beyond the assertion that hisfellow Tixtecos conserve this tradition, he proceeds to blur the distinc-tions of time, leaving the reader unable to determine if he is describingevents in his youth (i.e. before the Reform) or in the 1880s. In markedcontrast to Las tres caidas de Tacuba, he mentions the enduring co-operation of civil and religious officials in the procession's organization,despite its flagrantviolation of the law. He does not tarryon the derelic-tion of duty by local government authorities.Instead,Altamiranobecomescaught up in ethnic pride.Tixtla'sCorpuswas an Indian-controlled affair n which mestizos par-ticipated only marginally.Altamirano claims that local indigenous lead-ers determined the order of the rituals and the procession, and directedthe elaborate preparationsof the oak, palm, and floral ramadas that dec-orated the paraderoute. Altamirano also provides a detailed descriptionof the procession and each saint representing separate Indian barrios(Texaltzinco, Tlatelolco, and Santuario),highlighting their unique pos-ture and dress. With palpable glee he reveals that the dominant figureof the procession is a saint called SantiagoTlateloco, who appears as aproud, wild, dark-skinned Indian soldier. This machete-wielding, sar-castic-mienedsanto, Altamiranocrows, is an extravagantnative god-saintrendered in the image of Guerrero's nineteenth-century insurgents.44This dramatic depiction of the Indian rebel reappears in the author'schildhood recollections of how the procession's military complementvaried with prevailing political currents. During particularly chaotictimes, no organized troops appeared. Instead, intense, edgy posses ofirreverent Indians dressed like Santiago Tlatelolco, and heeding no de-votion or drumbeat, brought up the rear of the parade.45He closes ElCorpus without proposing an interpretation of this suggestive, proces-sional history. The verve with which he describes the flesh-and-bloodSantiagoTlatelolcos reveals a definite pride in Indianimpiety, but he doesnot extend this to a condemnation of priests or more devout Indians.Nor does he suggest methods for ending this breach of the Reform laws.

44. Altamirano does not make the Indian barrio distinctions in El Corpus, but hedoes in La Semana Santa en mipueblo. Thus I interpret the attachment of the names ofTixtla's Indian barrios to the saints, such as Texaltzinco and Tlatelolco, as evidence thatthese images pertained to those barrios.45. Altamirano,El Corpus.


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 63Instead, he leaves the reader with a sense of awe in the primitive inde-pendence of his paisanos.46

Altamirano's La Semana Santa en mipueblo is an even deeper ex-ploration of rural,IndianChristianity.Throughout the essay Altamiranorevealsa markedsensitivity for the village'soverlapping devotional, class,and ethno-cultural identities as the participants arrange themselves atmasses and accompany specific images in processions. He envelops hisrendering of Indianreligious practice in adream-likeworld of childhoodmemories, but despite this element of camouflagehe portraysa profoundindigenous commitment to cultural and political autonomy, which heintimates is the substrateof national unity and Mexico's commitment topolitical independence. He accomplishes this by stressing the natives'stubborn adherence to their religious traditions within Christianity,andlinking the landscape of indigenous, devotional activity to the historicalevents of patriotic, battlefield victories.47Before describing Holy Week he provides a thumbnail sketch ofTixtla'shistory and character.Incontrast to Texcoco the Nahuas of Tixtlaremainaproud andvigorous people thanks to their enduring dominanceof village life. They maintain a marked dedication to the autonomouscontrol of their faith rooted in Aztec tradition, which neither colonialreligious authorities nor Reform Laws have managed to alter or dislodge.They initiate the village festivals and assert a sense of ownership overthe parish church, the images it houses, and even the priest. Altamiranoclaims that during ceremonies, villagers assisting the priest watch himclosely to make sure he respects their traditions.Priests,he declares, mustlearn the appropriate local religious customs from the Indians. The In-dians in turn view clerical fees more as the payment of a hired workerthan as tribute owed to a master. Alongside his claims of Tixtla's spiri-tual autonomy, he interjects that his village, the birthplace of VicenteGuerrero, has remained a bastion of patriotic resistance to a successionof foreigners and reactionaries throughout the nineteenth century.48The climax of Altamirano'smelding of indigenous religious traditionsand liberalnationalism emerges in his interweaving of Tixtla's Good Fri-day celebration and his reconstruction of a battle of the IndependenceWars. The day's events feature a shift in the religious focus away fromthe plaza and parish church. Villagersbegin at dawn to walk and pray atgrottos along Tixtla's "Viacrusis"extending from the parish church to abarrio chapel upon the village's steep "Cerro de Calvario." Later a de-liberately slow, modest procession from the church carries the image of

46. Ibid.47. Altamirano,La Semana Santa en mi pueblo.48. Ibid.


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64 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosthe Buried Christ and the Virgin of Solitude to this chapel. This cere-mony demonstrates that nineteenth-century Tixtecos gave their villagegeography a sacred overlay.In essence, they mapped sacred history ontheir own symbolic, social, and geographic landmarks.49Altamiranoat-tempts to inscribe another historical event upon his village's sacred land-scape. Within his Good Fridaynarrativehe also tells the story of a bat-tle in which Jos6 MariaMorelos defeated royalist troops on Tixtla'sCalvary.During the struggle against Spain, he claims, the chapel func-tioned as Morelos's defensive bulwark and reverberated with the can-nonades and small armsfire of Independence. Returning to Holy Week,Altamiranodeclares, "Now the only sound beneath her humble walls isthe soft voice of the supplicant and the breast beating of the devout."50Thus,he links the indigenous celebration of Christ'sPassionand the birthpangs of the Mexican nation. This melding of religious and nationalistcommemoration tied to the very streets and hills of an Indian village,andAltamirano'sprevious assertion of Tixtla'scontinual commitment tothe defense of national sovereignty, reveal the author's attempt to es-tablish the liberal, patriotic credentials of his people. The coincidenceof the battle and their humble prayers at the same chapel allow Altami-rano to suggest that both their autonomous religiosity and their yearn-ing for liberty emanate from Indian culture. Hence, he implies that thisinnate passion for independence makes Mexico's Indians the necessaryfoundation of the nation-state.

Landscapes and LegendsAt the outset of this essay I proposed that Altamirano'ssketches of cus-toms and manners represent an early expression of modern Mexicanindigenismo, which attained prominence as a component of post-Revolutionary, nationalist state-building from the 1920s to the 1940s.This powerful social, cultural,and aesthetic movement has been the sub-ject of intense scholarlycriticism among modern Mexican historianswhoview it as a repackagingof racist,nineteenth-century, elite efforts to solvethe "Indianproblem."This historiographical current stresses that whiletrumpeting the nation's remote pre-conquest past and lauding Indianartistic traditions, indigenismo sought to destroy Mexico's living Indiancultures through a broad Hispanicization project designed to achieve anational mestizo homogeneity. In short, it was but a new stage of the

49. For a detailed description of this phenomenon in Spainsee WilliamA. Christian,Person and God in a Spanish Valley(New York:SeminarPress, 1972).50. Altamirano,La Semana Santa en mi pueblo, 53. "Ahoras61o se oyenjunto asus muros humildes, la voz apagada del rezadory los golpes depecho de los devotos."


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 65liberal project that defined Indians as a stubborn obstacle to nationalunity and modernization.51Butindigenismo was not a monolithic move-ment. Among its proponents, men like Carlos Basauri and Moises Saienzheld up twentieth-century Indian social organization and communal cul-ture as the appropriate model for creating a more equitable, progres-sive, modern nation. Within Mexico's contemporary indigenous tradi-tions they applauded what they viewed as high moral standards,naturalcollectivism, social unity, political egalitarianism, a pronounced workethic, a markedability to adapt to change, and an innate anti-clericalismand religious autonomy. This current of indigenismo stressed that Indi-ans were the intellectual peers of mestizos and whites, and thus theirmatch in terms of capacity for modernity.52Paisajesy leyendas voiced this type of Indian-centered nationalismnearly forty years before it emerged in the indigenista publications ofthe 1920s. Altamiranodid not dwell on Aztec glories like his predeces-sors FrayServando Teresa de Mier and Carlos Mariade Bustamante, orthe giant of twentieth-century indigenismo, ManuelGamio.53At the sametime he was composing his cuadros he was also engaged in the Porfirian-era intellectual debates surrounding the "Indianquestion." He sharplycriticized prominent positivists like Francisco Cosme, who judged Mex-ico's Indians as so hopelessly retrograde and decadent as to be unwor-thy of public education.54 Hisone-time studentJusto Sierrabelieved Euro-pean blood was the font of civilization, but argued that public educationcould transform Mexico's Indians into a progressive and productive el-ement of society.55 Altamiranowas also a tireless promoter of public ed-ucation for Indians, but Paisajes y leyendas demonstrates that he wasexploring something much more radical than Sierra's conservative in-digenismo.Viewing the collection of essays as a single, multi-faceted work and

51. See Brading,"ManuelGamioand Official ndigenismon Mexico,"BulletinofLatinAmericanResearch7,no. 1 (1988): 75-89;AlanKnight,"Racism, evolution, ndIndigenismo:Mexico, 1910-1940,"n TheIdea of Race in LatinAmerica, 1870-1940,ed. RichardGrahamAustin: niversity f TexasPress,1990);andDawson,"FromModels."Dawson pecifically ites the workof ArturoWarman,MaryKayVaughn,ClaudioLomnitz,Marjorie eckerasamong hosewho describe ndigenismo sessentially hegemonicHis-panicization rogram.52. Dawson,"FromModels."53. DavidA Brading, rophecyand Mythin MexicanHistory(Cambridge: am-bridgeUniversityPress,1984);andBrading 988,"ManuelGamio."54. T.G.Powell,"Mexicanntellectuals nd the IndianQuestion,"HispanicAmer-ican HistoricalReview38 (Feb.1968):19-36.55. Knight,"Racism;"owell,"Mexicanntellectuals;"ndWilliamD.Raat,"Losn-tellectuales, l positivismo, la cuesti6n ndigena," istoriaMexicana20, no. 3 (1970):412-27.


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66 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosanalyzing individual essays along a setting-based continuum stretchingfrom Mexico City to the traditional Indian village of the author's birthreveals a coherent subtextualproto-indigenismo. This approach exposesAltamirano's nalyticalprogression from what he viewed as the decadent,hybrid, and clerically-exploited popular piety of Mexico City to what hedeemed the more genuine, independent, inherently Mexican religion ofthe Indians of Tixtla. This journey is fraught with tension between hisrealist, secular, modernization-oriented impulses and his quest for thefoundations of an authentic national culture. Butit is not the hand-wring-ing revelation of an unbridgeable chasm between folk traditions and hisaspirations of national progress. On the contrary, tracing Altamirano'slinkage of the nation to his village, the present to the past, and Mexi-caness to rural Indian Catholicism reveals his experimentation withIndian-centered nationalism. The vehicle of his analysis is not the rail-road or a simple juxtaposition of modernity and tradition, but ratherhisexploration of popular religious customs and their role in society. Es-sentially,he claims thatthe Indianhinterland,symbolized by Amecamecaand his native village, has a time-honored and crucial role to play in thenation's march toward progress. Culminating in his description of HolyWeek and Corpus Christi,Paisajes y leyendas projects the notion thatliberalism, the Mexican nation, and the popular drive for political andcultural independence emerge from the fiercely autonomous and in-nately American customs of Mexico's Indian villages.He demonstrates that he was a precursor not only of a current oftwentieth-century indigenismo, but also of the portrayal national ar-chetypes and popular customs in post-Revolutionary literature and art.His preference for popular puppet theater over classic Spanish reper-toire and his glowing portrait of rural, popular Catholicism anticipatethe twentieth-century Mexican intellectual elite's embrace of the folk-loric. His vivid rendering of the wild, irreverent, Indian insurgentreemerges in the muralistmovement, fiction inspired by the Revolution,and the Octavio Paz'sLabyrinth of Solitude. Likewise, Jose ClementeOrozco's frescoes echo the author'ssentimental portraitof the first Fran-ciscans. Andhis ferocious criticism of the cult of the Virginof Guadalupeand Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City precede the wave ofpost-Revolutionary iconoclasm.Yet some important questions remain unanswered. Why did Alta-mirano shroud his indigenismo in the mist and smoke of literaryartifice?Andwhy didhe express his Indian-centerednationalismonly in the eclec-tic safety of costumbrismo? It is impossible to answer these questionswith certainty, but I can suggest some reasons relevant to Altamirano'sposition in liberal politics and intellectual circles of late nineteenth-century Mexico and the nature of Spanish American discourse. First, it


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Wright-Rios:Altamirano's Landscapes and Legends 67is important to stress Altamirano'smarginalization from the center ofpower during both the Restored Republic and the Porfirianperiod and,perhaps more significantly,his intellectual isolation aspositivism becamethe dominant elite ideology and European race science approached itsapogee in Mexico.56Despite key figures like Sierraand Altamirano, thereigning conception of indigenous and rural culture in PorfirianMexicowas overwhelmingly negative.57 His tendency to makes the heroes ofhis fiction righteous, hardworking Indians who had been slighted bycriollos, and the press's fondness for derisive barbs that aimed at his in-digenous physical appearance and cultural heritage while belittling hispolitical and literaryachievements, make it tempting to suggest that hisown experience as an Indianamong the nation'spredominantly Hispanicintellectuals and politicians may have made him tread carefully.58Per-haps Altamirano's eaders,Mexico's literate elite, could not countenancestraightforward indigenismo in the 1880s.59He may have had personaldifficulties approaching the issue directly due to the undeniably religiousnature of rural,indigenous life. His intimate, nostalgic rendering of fes-tivals of his youth and his preoccupation with "true"Christianity sug-gest that he perhaps had some personal conflicts regarding religion thathe was unprepared to air in pubic without distancing himself in somefashion.Paisajesy leyendas is best understood within the context of the chal-lenges faced by Spanish-Americanwriters as they sought to establish anauthentic American cultural discourse that obeyed tenets of modernityoriginating in Europe and yet faithfully rendered anti-modern, local re-alities. They received little help from Europeanwriters who rooted theirmodern authorial identity in the cities shaped by the IndustrialRevolu-tion. Neither the economic, social, or cultural underpinnings of mod-

56. Knight,"Racism."57. WilliamH.Beezley, udas at theJockeyClub(Lincoln:University f NebraskaPress,1987).SeealsoKnight,"Racism."58. IgnacioManuelAltamirano:iconografia,d.Catalina ierra ndCristina arros(Mexico:CONACULTA,993)reproduces omeparticularlyruelcaricatures f Altami-rano. Forexample, in Mefist6feles,June 13, 1878 (page 77), Altamiranoappeared almostsimian, nd heaccompanyinghymeabeledhim"...un dolo de barropor lofeo."ElbijodelAbuizote,June17,1892(page 184), showed a dark-skinned ltamirano s a pueblomusiciann a swampserenading bust/idolof a fair-complected orfirioDiazwhile thehigh literary rtssink nto the mire.59. Altamirano,lZarcoyLaNavidad en las montaflas(Mexico:Editorial orrua,1966).Altamirano'sndictmentof the period'sracism s clear n ElZarco.The hero is avaliant,honorable, nlightened, ndianblacksmithpurnedbythevillagebeauty nfavorof the white, blue-eyed,cowardlybrigand.Bothshe andherbandit overmockhim forhis dark skin and indigenous features only to meet their doom when the forces of law andorder and the Indian smithy emerge triumphant.


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68 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanosern city life existed in Altamirano'sMexico. Hence, like his counterpartsthroughout LatinAmerica, he turned to rural society in hopes of find-ing his nation's cultural identity, but tapped in to the authority vestedin urbanmodernity.The conflicts embedded in this endeavor remain thesource of scholarly misunderstanding of these texts. Altamirano'sob-sessive examination of folk Catholicism in several different settings inPaisajes y leyendas reveals that he recognized the dissonance withinhis personal discourse-building project. Costumbrismo was simply thebest literaryform within his reach that allowed him to manage this ten-sion while forwarding new ideas. Its hybrid and traditionalnature pro-vided Altamiranowith a sheltered medium in which he created textsthat mix sentimental autobiography, cultural history, journalistic obser-vation, editorial commentary, and political sermon. Herein lies the ge-nius of costumbrismo, the reason for its endurance in Spanish America,and the source of contemporary literarycontempt forthe genre. Itsopen-ness to long, seemingly trivial, minute description served as the cloakwith which Altamiranodraped his ambivalence toward modernity anda novel nationalist formation whose time had not yet come.

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