Nahua Thought and Scapegoating

[RobertZ]

Any other thoughts about integrating non-dual Awareness and avoiding scapegoating?

Ezekiel Stear explores Nahua thought in general, and how we can know about Nahua thought via reconstruction of critical documentation.[1]  Stear beautifully describes the role that people have in initiating, directing, and creating Teotl’s process (compare European thought: objects being drawn or led by a final purpose). Nahua cultures had a dynamic capacity to accept and integrate new values.[2] This system of systems, to incorporate new values, was repressed. 

To my knowledge, the best account of the interaction of Nahua worldviews and European worldviews is Melissa June Frost’s dissertation, Herbs That Madden, Herbs That Cure: A History of Hallucinogenic Plant Use in Colonial Mexico (2017).[3]  European authorities neither perceived nor understood the psychotropic medicines they banned. An example of this ignorance was the trial of the native sorcerer Martin Ocelotl, condemned for using peyote to save Spaniards dying of diseases.[4] All this reminds me also of Jesus who said, "I have said to you, you are gods" (Jn 10:34); and also, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Lk. 32:34).

The ignorant repression of Nahua Awareness was complicated. Amerindian populations declined from ~22,000,000 to 1,000,000 between ~1550 and 1650, mostly because of disease. Massive human sacrifice was also suppressed, primarily through a vicious battle between Juan de Alvarado and the Aztec high priesthood [and the rebellion-siege by Hernan Cortes and various tribes].

If we unearth and integrate Nahua epistemology, scapegoating may be a critical issue. Shall we avoid participating in scapegoating? Why? How? What systems can we use to address scapegoating if we become victims? How can we intervene if we see scapegoating happening?

 

[1] Ezekiel G. Stear. Beyond the Fifth Sun: Nahua Teleologies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2015). Online: <https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/19481>.

[2] I can’t remember the citation—I believe it was an article on human sacrifice. One old quote said, ‘Before the final hiding of Nahua thought, we were able to get as far as integrating the Trinity, Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus.’ 

[3] Online: <https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/05741r84c>.

[4] Patricia Lopes. Don, Franciscans, Indian Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1543 (2006). Online: <https://www.jstor.org/stable/20079359>.