Mexican Inquisition - Indigenous Adaptation To New Religion

Indigenous Adaptation To New Religion

The native population adjusted to those aspects of Christianity that accorded itself to the view of the cosmos they already knew, including the notion of the intertwining of both religious and secular authority. Many European and indigenous practices continues side-by-side and many indigenous beliefs and practices were redesigned with Christian names and references. The goal was to preserve as much of the ancient symbols that had always given meaning to the universe. The further away a community was from direct Church intervention, the thinner the Christian veneer was. Pre-Hispanic beliefs and practices therefore survived in the new religion and colored its expression. The most famous example of this may be the emergence of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún suspected it was a post-Conquest adaptation of the Aztec cult of Tonatzin, a mother goddess. There was even some speculation at the time that the god Quetzalcoatl was being refashioned as the Apostle Thomas.

However, not all native reaction was docile. There was strong resistance early on in Tlaxcala. The Oaxaca sierra violently resisted until the late 1550s as well as the Otomi and peoples in parts of Michoacán state as late as the 1580s.