The “tale about a man and a hare”[135] renders a Huastecan Nahua variant of the universal flood story and seems to be a modern version of a very old tale that circulated in Meso-America in precolonial times; it shows a remarkable resemblance to one of the episodes described in the Leyenda de los Soles or Legend of the Suns. This document, stemming from ancient Aztec oral and written traditions in which the world’s existence is explained as a succession of five creations, represents one of the fullest and most expressive legacies of Aztec origin tales. Although the contents of this text are not completely precolonial, as it was written in 1558 --almost forty years after the Conquest-- it suggests at least that the flood motif was already present in Mesoamerican belief before Christianity’s arrival.
The Leyenda de los Soles constitutes a frame of reference for precolonial Mesoamerican thought on the world and its structuring principles[136]. The origin tales interpreted in this document recapitulate the cyclical world view of the Aztecs, who were living in the Fifth “Sun” or Era of Creation. Four preceding Suns had already been overturned by different kind of disasters sent by the deities, and mankind had been brought into being by these same deities, after each catastrophe. The Fifth Sun was ruled and named by the sign ollin (movement) and was to be destroyed in time, by a series of crushing earthquakes. The successive destructions of the former worlds had been brought about by raging felines that devoured mankind, devastating hurricanes sweeping away everything on earth, ferocious rains of fire burning all, and an omnipresent flood drowning the universe, in this order[137]. It is this last destruction that catches our attention.
The world’s fourth and last destruction --at least until today-- is reconstructed in the Leyenda de los Soles in the flood episode, in which a man and a woman are warned about an upcoming worldly inundation by a deity, and are able to survive the disaster inside a hollow ahuehuete tree or cypress. When they come back to earth and start cooking the dead fish that lay scattered around, the deities smell the smoke of their fire. One deity is sent to punish the survivors, who are turned into dogs. Herewith is a full account of the episode[138]:
This sun is named 4 Water. And for fifty-two years there was water.
These people lived in the fourth one, in the time of the sun 4 Water. And it was 676 years that they lived. And they died by drowning. They turned into fish.
The skies came falling down. There were destroyed in only one day.
And what they ate was 4 Flower. That was their food.
And their year was 1 House. And it was on a day sign 4 Water that they were destroyed. All the mountains disappeared. And the water lay for fifty-two years.
And when their years were complete, then Titlacahuan gave a command to the one called Tata, and to his wife, who was called Nene. He said to them, “Put aside your cares. Hollow out a big cypress, and when it’s Tozoztli [April] and the skies come falling down, get inside”.
And so they got inside. Then he sealed them in and said, “You must eat only one of these corn kernels. Also your wife must only eat one”. Well, when they had eaten it all up, they went aground.
It can be heard that the water is drying. The log has stopped moving. Then it opens. They see a fish. Then they drill a fire and cook fish for themselves.
Then the gods Citlalinicue and Citlalatonac looked down and said, “Gods, who’s doing the burning? Who’s smoking the skies?”
Then Titlacahuan, Tezcatlipoca, came down and scolded them. He said, “What are you doing, Tata? What are you people doing?”
Then he cut off their heads and stuck them on their rumps, and that way they were turned into dogs.
Now, it was in the year 2 Reed that the skies were [again] smoked. This is how we ourselves exist, how the fire drill ignited. When the sky was established was in a year 1 Hare. [Yes,] this is how the fire drill ignited, when fire appeared [for the new-fire ceremony].
Now, it was dark for twenty-five years.
Well, it was in the year 1 Hare that the sky was established. And when it had been established, the dogs sent up smoke, as mentioned above. And after the fire drill had ignited -after Tezcatlipoca had drilled fire- he smoked the sky once more, and this was in a year 2 Reed. (Bierhorst 1992b:143-145, brackets in the original.)
Considering the obvious relations that exist between the Legend of the Suns’ episode and the contemporary Huasteca Nahua flood tale, I shall discuss the present-day tale in light of the prior one. Occasionally, other precolonial and early-Colonial sources such as the Codex Borgia and the Codex Vaticano A shall be used as a reference framework to understand specific aspects of the current Nahua tale. Yet, this does not assume an exclusively comparative analysis, since the contemporary product is by no means the result of a simple reproduction of the Aztec tradition. The Nahua tale represents a tale which, even if it draws on former accounts and reveals similar motifs, has acquired new symbolic meanings with its own messages and purposes. The stability or permanence of both the structure and significance of motifs in narrative offers key factors for understanding both ancient and contemporary indigenous thought, if they are studied in light of historical and contemporary changes in present-day indigenous societies (López Austin 1998:395;454).
The debate on the subjects of syncretism and cultural continuity in indigenous societies is not new, and part of it deals with the issue of whether precolonial traits, especially in Mesoamerican religion(s), may be associated to current time, and how. In this connection, López Austin (1994:10-17) sees the Mesoamerican religious complex as a unity that comprises a structured whole of social processes, beliefs, practices, values and representations of indigenous peoples. Many parts of this religious complex have changed and been transformed throughout the centuries because of society’s dynamic character. However, it also has a “hard nucleus” that has been preserved
through time and that contains its most essential aspects. According to López Austin, it is the existence of this hard nucleus which makes it feasible to establish a comparison between precolonial and contemporary indigenous societies.
Diachronical research is also done by Anders and Jansen (1994, 1996a). Based on the idea that precolonial indigenous peoples held fundamental concepts in common, it is also known that they demonstrated a great variety of practices in time and space, which permitted them to adapt themselves to new circumstances without losing their identity. This adaptability has made the process of continuity possible. Christianity has had to accept the reinterpretation of its symbols and values in the Mesoamerican context, whose expression is very much present in ancestral sacred geography, as, for example, in ideas about the sacred hill (1994:99-123). In order to research processes of continuity one should study both contemporary as well as precolonial and colonial cultural expressions.
Gossen emphasizes the processes of both cultural continuity and change that were and are operative in Mexican Maya cultures, which have retained practices and beliefs dating back several centuries, but are also highly adaptive to current fast-changing times (1999:161, 243). Concerning oral tradition, Williams García (1972:136-137), a scholar of indigenous tales from the Huasteca area, thinks that cosmological tales, which he calls myths, have molded themselves into new beliefs and practices without losing their informative and sanctioning purpose, reinterpreting names and concepts without altering themes. From quite another perspective, Taggart states that the tales that have originated from the same historical source and that have spread to different storytelling communities, may be compared whenever the social and cultural context of both communities is taken into account (1997:10-22). In his study, Taggart compares Nahua tales with Spanish tales from Cácares --the region that contributed the first colonialists to settle in the Sierra de Puebla area that he studies-- to show how oral tradition reveals diverging ways of valuing masculinity in both societies, in accordance with the cultural values attributed to this aspect of everyday life. Comparative research shows cross-cultural adaptableness of oral traditions, as well as specific processes of reshaping tales according to the new cultural context. The study of cultural continuity in the Huastecan Nahua deluge tale is based on a description and discussion of its motifs. The motifs are constituted by a set of elements and concepts characterizing and defining the motif, also called a thematic unit (van der Loo 1987:21-26). When the same thematic unit is found in narratives from different periods, these narratives might permit a historical projection that can help understand the motif[139]. To be effective, the analysis must be based on motifs found in roughly similar
contexts as their sixteenth-century counterpart (Taggart 1983:112), and the motifs’ arrangement within the texts must follow a more or less analogous sequence (Horcasitas 1988:184). The identification of certain motifs with one of its antecedents then serves to examine and explain the motifs’ transformation into their new symbolic context. The fact that we can count on a written, fixed Aztec version of the flood tale is unique, and allows us to make the analysis comparing these motifs and their contexts.
Furthermore, Don Pancho’s flood tale shall be associated to additional sources, like present-day Nahua versions of the tale --both within the Huasteca area and outside of it--, to other contemporary indigenous flood tales from Mexico, and, of course, to the Biblical flood tale. These sources are not only used as comparative material to understand the Nahua tale’s particular details, which seem ambiguous, and give examples of the heterogeneity existing in Mesoamercan flood tales. All these sources somehow influenced and shaped the tale presented here and thus provide a means to understand the Huastecan Nahua flood tale more thoroughly.
Type of tale
As explained before, the designation of the type of tale depends on its reception as a genuine or fictional account. In the flood tale’s case, authenticity is claimed by many people, including the narrator himself. The tale is commonly seen as a true tale about a remote past and involves an almost literal understanding of its contents. This tale type labelling is due mainly to two reasons: the actual belief in the existence of the hare on the moon, and the credence in the certainty of a past universal flood.
A first factor for claiming authenticity is the episode of the hare jumping on the moon. Almost all Nahuas affirm the existence of the hare on the celestial body, which can be discerned as a dark silhouette during full moon. To them, the tale’s crucial part is the passage explaining why the animal is now living in the moon. Some narrators finish their performance when the hare jumps off the craft to stay above; they will only go on telling the tale if the audience asks what happened next to the other survivors (for example, van ‘t Hooft and Cerda 2003:95-99). It seems that the flood story is conceived as an etiological one which explains why the hare is now stuck to the moon, more than a cosmogonic tale about the world’s recreation. In fact, the complete tale as represented above does not seem to be one that is usually transmitted; at first, many people did not recognize it. Some persons recalled the first part about the forest rising over and over again, but did not connect it with a universal deluge. Others said they knew about a flood that had wiped out the world in former days, but could not recollect the story as told. The episode of the hare jumping on the moon, however, is well known.
When asked to narrate how the hare came to live on the moon, all the answers were directly linked with cataclysmic waters overtaking mankind. The prevailing conception of the rodent as the moon’s naual (see below), related to pulque (the fermented licor of the agave plant), drunkenness, menstruation and pregnancy, could explain the strength of the episode in Nahua narrative. All in all, the set of current beliefs about the hare makes the flood tale’s contents form a part of a true tale.
Most Nahuas believe in the flood tale’s genuineness but do not always recognize every episode of the tale as described above. As far as the flooding part is concerned, they claim authenticity. Nahuas bring up the biblical account as proof when asked about the events’ truthfulness as reported in the tale. In daily practice, except from the local catequistas (“catechists”), very few people have a Bible at home and even fewer have read some of its passages. Nahuas refer to the tale as “the one told in the Bible” but, apart from the readings heard in church[140], they are not very well acquainted with the biblical story. Nevertheless, the Bible’s contents are seen as a chronicle of real happenings, and the fact that the flood tale is written down in the Bible makes it a true tale.
During the performance, the narrator claims he is saying the truth through a series of verbal expessions. Starting from the first sentence (lines 1-6) he uses the expressions kiijtouaj (“they say”, “it is said”[141]) and uajkauaya (long ago), two assertions of truth in Nahua narrative, which are strengthened by the descriptions nama kipixkiya miyak uan miyak xiuitl (now it is already many and many years ago) and uan axmomati asta kema (and it is not known when). Thus, the tale is labeled from the very start as a true tale about a remote past. During the rest of the performance, no further references are made to the authenticity issue. Don Pancho’s self-confidence as a performer, and the knowledge that the tale is regularly seen as a true tale prevent him from recurring to these verbal expressions. To all listeners, it is clear that the events deal with authentic events set in a remote past.