What happened
to the Nahuas of Honduras?
By Wendy
Griffin
If the
largest community in Santa Barbara, Malachoa had 1000 people in 1540 and they
spoke Mexican or Nahua, where are they today?
When I first wrote about the Nahua Indians of Northeastern Honduras in the
Trujillo area, the Lower Aguan Valley, the Agalta Valley, the Ciudad Blanca
area between the Rio Paulaya and Rio Platano in 1991 and 1992 in books like
Dioses, Heroes y Hombres en el Universo Mitico Pech (Gods, heros and Men in the
Pech mythical Universe) and the History of the Indians of Northeastern Honduras,
people would ask me where did they go?
At that time I did not have the whole story, but now I know more of it.
1) The
Nahuas of Honduras and Guatemala were excessively affected by the Spanish practice
of taking slaves and exporting them out of the country. Whole towns in Colon and Olancho were
enslaved and sold. One early governor of Honduras had the plan to export the
entire Indian town of Naco, Santa Barbara 40,000 people as slaves, a project he
began, but other Spaniards stopped him. When he left Honduras he and friends
took almost 2,000 Indian slaves with them. Of the dozens of boatloads of
Honduran Indians who were taken to Cuba and Santo Domingo to be slaves before
Indian slavery stopped in 1545, only 11 were still alive in 1545 and they were
not brought back to Honduras.
2) The
Nahuas often died in the epidemics in the colonial period brought by the
Spanish such as Black Plague, smallpox, measles, flu, typhoid, malaria, etc.
because they lived close together and
the Spanish purposely built near them and used them as interpreters and
workers. They also died of overwork by the Spanish in mines and in carrying
things from one part of Honduras to another and in wars with the Spanish. For
example, in Agalteca, Olancho the Spanish cut the Indians and fed them to the
dogs. They set fire to the houses of the Indians with the Indians in them, then
captured the Indian survivors and forced them into slavery to carrying mining
tools to Nicaragua and almost all of them died along the way.
3) Thousands of Nahuas lived in the mountains
as free Indians where they were known as Jicaques, Payas, Mexicanos or among
the Miskitos the Rah. They frequently intermarried with these other Indian
groups or with non-Indian groups like mulattos and Blacks. For example, one man
in San Pedro said his grandmother was a Paya from Gualaco,Olancho in the Agalta
Valley, which is not a Pech community,
and married with a black from Olancho.
Place names with gua- like Guatemala, Tonjagua, Gualala, Gualaco,
Guatemala, Gualaco, seem to be associated with Indians who seem to be Nahua
speakers. A number of Miskitos say
they are mixed descendants of Rah-Miskito couples like Erasmo Ordeñes of Ahuas,
author of a new Miskito grammar book, and Orfa Jackson of Brus Laguna, who
translated many of the Miskito stories collected by MISKIWAT, including the
story of the Rah. Because Nahuas lived
in areas not conquered by the Spanish, they barely appear in Honduran archives,
like many of the Indians of El Paraiso or Yoro and Atlantida and Olancho.
4) Some
Nahuas lived in Pueblos de Indios (Indian towns) as tributary Indians, although
the chiefs did not have to pay tribute. In these Pueblos de Indios, they
sometimes married Indians from other tribes like the Chorti or the Lencas, or
they married non-Indian peoples like Blacks and the Spanish. Chorti, Lenca and
Tolupan oral literature all reflect Nahua
influence to the point that many of the principal gods reported among the
Tolupanes of Montaña de la Flor, have Nahua names like Teot, and Toman. The
name of the rain god collected among the Lencas is Managua, the name of a lake
in Nicaroa or Nahua speaker part of Nicaragua.
5) Some
Nahuas knew they were from Indian towns like Texiguat, El Paraiso, Catacamas or
Siguaté, Olancho, various towns in Santa Barbara and Ocotepeque, Cortes, and
Choluteca, but they forgot what tribe they were from, or they remembered they
were from free Indians, known as Jicaques or Payas, but do not know that the modern
meanings of Jicaques (referring just to the Indians who spoke Tol) and Paya
(referring just to speakers of Pech) is not the same as the historical meaning
of the words which was different.
6) There
was tremendous movements of people caused by the Spanish Conquest, and again
when foreign companies entered the North Coast after the Independence from
Spain. Indians who started in Western
Honduras have been reported later in Guatemala along the Montagua River or in
Northeastern Honduras. Indians that started on the North Coast ended up in
Choluteca at the El Corpus mine or other mines like Sabana Grande. Some of these areas also saw a lot of movement
due to the War of Olancho in the 1860’s and the Contra War in the 1980’s which
affected El Paraiso, Olancho and the Mosquitia.
Since the
Honduran government did not accept to count Nahuas or Pipils in the Ethnic
Census of 2001, we do not know where all the former Nahua speakers ended up.
Since all former Nahua speakers now speak Spanish, the government did not ask
if people spoke Nahua in the 1988 census on languages, but the wildly
inaccurate counting of Jicaque (which people may have identified as the
language of unconquered Indians) who appeared all over the country, probably
has to do with this group. The unusual reports of Payas in the Municipio or
County of Santa Fe, Colon in this census and reports of Jicaques also in the
mountains of Santa Fe, Colon, more famous for its Garifuna communities on the
beach west of Trujillo, in the 2001 Ethnic Census may reflect the modern descendants of the Nahua speakers of
Trujillo and the Aguan Valley who had been in hiding in the mountains of the
Department of Colon.
In this
census, some old “pueblos de indios” the
colonial period Indian communities in Santa Barbara, a lot of people reported
they were Lencas, like in Ilamatepeque. At least 30 communities in Santa
Barbara identified as having over 100 Lencas even though the Lenca
organizations like ONILH and COPIN were not previously active among them. In other old “pueblo de indios” of Santa
Barbara like Gualala, few people reported being Lenca. All the inhabitants there chose the “other”
category, even though according to Honduran anthropologist Adalid Martinez this
is where more Indians of Santa Barbara live and their Guancasco is famous and
they widely announce that it is being help on the Honduran radio and newspaper
reports are done about it, so they are not ashamed of their Indian heritage or
hiding who they are. The likely problem is that they are descendants of Nahua
speakers or mixed Lencas and Nahua speakers and since they could not choose
Nahua or Pipil or Care or Jucap, which were the likely Lenca subgroups in the
area, they chose “other”.
7) Many
former Nahua areas where modern Indians have been reported by highly respected
Honduran and Salvadoran anthropologists in the 1990’s such as Manuel Chaves,
Ramon Rivas, Adalid Martinez, Lazaro Flores, and Garifuna researcher Fausto
Miguel Alvarez like Santa Barbara,
Choluteca, Cortes at the mouth of the Ulua River, and El Paraiso are not
members of the Nahua Federation founded by Olancho Nahuas of the Catacamas
area, Guata and Jano, Olancho in 1996, but are likely to be the modern
descendants of the Nahua Indians of those departments. This is the most controversial
of all the Honduran ethnic federations as to whether the people are in fact
Indians or Nahuas or some other tribe(s), and as of 2010, this Federation did not have legal
recognition from the Honduran state, known as personaría juridical, and so they
are not counted as Indians. They are
however part of the Secretary of Indian Peoples and Afro-Hondurans and the
Ministry of Education’s Bilingual Intercultural Education program
Mestizaje,
mixing of races, did affect some Honduran Mayas, Lencas and especially the
Nahuas. Some Mayas, Chortis and Nahuas intermarried with African blacks brought to
Western Honduras and Eastern Guatemala before the end of the 16th
century. The books which recorded Catholic marriages in the Copan area and also
in areas of Guatemala show a lot of mixed marriages between Indians and African
blacks. The child of such marriages
often had a better situation than the Indian mother or the black slave, because
the child was born free, not a slave under Spanish law, and at first mulattos
did not have to pay any tribute. Also
mulatto and mestizo women were the preferred marriage partners of the Spanish
men, who outnumbered the Spanish women about 10 to 1.
This
resulted in a number of people who were legally counted as Spanish for the
purpose of land titling and taxes or becoming priests, but who in fact had
Indian and mulatto ancestors. Both modern geneaological studies of leading
Honduran families and the reports of the Spanish governor doing the census in
1804 noting that many of the Spanish were in fact legally considered Spanish,
but had mixed race, the same as the less fortunate Ladinos who were subject to
higher taxes and could not own land and at the end of the colonial period the
Spanish also began to “reduce” ladinos, by hauling them physically out of the
mountains and force them to live in towns near the Spanish, work for Spanish
and pay taxes. In the category of “Spanish”, the mulatto wives of the Spanish were
also often included. In regards to the
militia of mulattos and dark skinned persons (mulatos y pardos), the Spanish
governor also reported in 1804 that every race and lineage was found in that
militia. The fact that some of the
Ladinos of Eastern Guatemala knew 200 medicinal plants in Nahua supports the
idea that many of the Nahuas eventually became Ladinos. Since if the Spanish
spoke any Indian language, it was usually Nahua, would have also made it easier
to get permission from the parents to marry Nahua Indians girls.
Some Nahuas
also intermarried with the Chortis. For example the family names of Oaxaca and
Suchite (from Suchit-flower in Nahua) among the Honduran Chortis are of Nahua
origin. It is interesting that a number of the important healers and leaders in
Honduras among the Maya Chorti are from families with Nahua last names. One
interesting legend recorded among the Honduran Chorti and made into a play in
Honduras that became a video was about a Mayan princess. A Lenca boy fell in
love with her and wanted to marry her, but her family objected because the
family already had plans to marry her to a rich and powerful Maya elsewhere and
they looked down on the Lenca boy as not good enough. The Lenca boy robbed the
girl without her parent’s permission. A war ensued between the Lencas and Mayas
and the Mayan girl was killed and became a wondering woman spirit. This is one
origin of the Sihuanaba (Spirit of a woman) in Honduras, but other origins have
to do with Nahua stories. The bad
feelings between Ladinos and Lencas and Ladinos and Maya-Chortis, may then go
back to pre-Columbian times and the Nahua ancestors of many of the Ladinos of
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
An
important dance among the Chortis of Guatemala is the Baile del Huasteco (the
dance of the Huasteco). Huasteco can
mean a man from the Huastec or Wastek Mayan tribe which currently lives in
Mexico on the Gulf Coast, but in fact even though Maya Chorti and Huasteca are
both Mayan languages, they are not particularly closely related. La Huasteca is
a part of Mexico which includes areas where the Huastec Maya live, but in fact
the majority of the Indians, over 70%, who live in that area are Nahua speakers. They
immigrated to the area of the La Huasteca in the Post Classic in relation with
cities that were associated with the Toltecs like Tajín and Tula, Hidalgo. A city in the area of la Huasteca is
Veracruz. From the area around Veracruz is where Ce Acalt the Toltec king was
supposed to have left for Central America where he later founded Payaqui among
the Mayas Chortis, including those in Guatemala. Being from la huasteca, he
could be the Huasteco, the man from Huasteca that the dance refers to or his
followers, both Nahuas and Mayas, could be the people the Huastecos refers
to. Also one of the characters in the
dance, which is a dance drama about the conquest period according to Brent
Metz, is La Malinche, Cortes’s bilingual (Nahua and Maya) mistress and
interpreter. She was an Aztec princess
so she spoke Nahuatl whose family lost a war with the Mayas and the Mayas made
her a slave. The Mayas gave her to Cortes when he attacked them in Mexico and
he also found a shipwrecked Spanish sailor who had lived among the Maya for
about 4 years. So between the two of
them he could talk to the Mayas and the Aztecs and of course to the Central American
Pipils, whose dialect of Nahua is very similar to Veracruz or Huasteca
Nahua. So the name of the dance could
refer to who taught it, or who is dancing it, or the name could be “El Baile de
la Huasteca”, the dance of the Woman from La Huasteca, referring to la Malinche
or Doña Marina as she is often called in Spanish.
Only two
groups in the Honduras region do dances in which one of the characters is La
Malinche, the Indians of Mejicapa, Lempira who do a Guancasco with the Indians
of Gracias, Lempira noted in David Flores’s book The Historical Evolution of
Honduran Folkdances and the Maya Chorti who dance the Baile del Huatesco,
according to anthropologists Brent Metz and Rafael Girard. The Indian towns of
Mejicapa, Lempira like those of Mejicapa, Comayagua and Mejicapa, Usulutan, El
Salvador were founded by Mexican Indians brought by conquistadores like Pedro
Alvarado from his encomiendas in Central Mexico to help conquer Central
America. They were never sent home again after the wars of conquest, but rather
were settled near the Spanish to work for them and translate for them.
The Saga of
Cofradia lands and The Causes of many Honduran Revolutions in Honduras
By Wendy
Griffin
The fact
that many Honduran Indians and now the Ladino descendants of Honduran Indians
in Western, Southern, Central Honduras and even in El Paraiso and Olancho did
ceremonies with huge dance presentations or dance-theater presentations during
the patron saint’s fairs seems to be a cute fact of Honduran folklore that in
fact most Hondurans are unaware of. These large dance or dance-theater
presentations were usually done in a context that also included sharing of corn
based drinks like chilate (corn porridege with cacao) or chicha (corn beer),
games which sometimes included the sacrifice of animals, processions greeting
other saints who come for the fair, religious ceremonies like weddings and
baptisms and masses that were led by the Catholic priest but assisted by the
Indians, and all night dancing to popular music. These dances are known
collectively as “Guancascos”. They were
organized as part of the patron’s saint fair by an association of Indian
leaders organized by the Catholic church, known as Cofradias. These Cofradias
had legal standing in the colonial era and owned land on which they raised
cattle to pay for the expenses of the fair, pay the priest, and in the Lenca
area support schools. The Cofradias also had
internal mechanisms for lending money and making available milk, which
was usually processed to make breads of corn with cheese like rosquillas, to
the poor within the community.
These
dances were also noticed in the tax structure of the Aztec and Pipil towns at
the time of the Spanish Conquest who collected special taxes for maintaining
the people who did dances, musicians, and people who put on plays and games
during the big festivals, reported Hernan Cortes. There were also special
singing schools to learn the songs for the festivals. In the colonial period, the Indians under the
Spanish control used the sale of cattle and milk or milk products from the
cattle on their cofradia lands to fund the fairs including the musicians, the
costumes, the musical instruments, the food, and the payment of the priest who
usually came once a year during the fair to do ceremonies like baptisms and
marriages.
Cofradias
were religious organizations organized by the Catholic Church in the colonial
period, but were controlled by the Indians themselves. The same people who were
the leaders of the cofradias were also the same people who were the mayor, the
sheriff, the city council, etc. in the Indian governments within the Indian
towns organized by the Spanish. In many areas where cofradias have been
studied, such as in the Maya-Quiche and Chorti areas of Guatemala, the traditional
practioners of the ceremonies related to pre-Christian beliefs such as rain
bringing ceremonies were also the leaders of the cofradias. Since the cofradia controlled land and
resources, the elections of its leaders and their taking of power were important
moments in the Indian community life. The Lencas had a special dance called Las
Escobas (the brooms) which was done before cleaning the office of the cofradia
before the new officers took office on 1 January. In Honduras more rural people
go home to dance all night 31 December until dawn on 1 December than go home
for Christmas. The Day January 1 has many religious meanings in rural Honduras
that have nothing to do with the beginning of the New year according to the
European calendar. There is a new book out on the Political and Religious
calendar of the Vara Alta de Yamaranquila, one of the last Lenca cofradias,
which provides much insight into this organization and Lenca celebrations.
The
Honduran hero from the early days of Honduran Independence Francisco Morazon is
treated almost like a god in Honduran public schools. For example, Honduran
school children learn the phrase, Dark is the night but Morazan is watching, as
if Morazan was watching them while they sleep instead of God. However, the Lencas tend not to have a good opinion of
him, reports Spanish linguist Atanasio Herranz. Also the Indians of Olancho
were in almost constant revolt against him, reports Cesar Indiano in his book
Los hijos del infotunio (The sons of misfortune). The Garifunas closed the
ports of Omoa and Trujillo to the
troops of Morazon and this caused the use of the port of Tela for the first
time by the Spanish speakers of Honduras reports Honduran historian Medardo
Mejia in his series on the History of Honduras. The issue that caused most of Honduras, and a
good part of Central America to rise up against him was not the issue of
Central American union, but rather anti-church laws, and specifically laws
against the cofradia lands used to finance the dances at the fairs.
To the
Nahua and Maya speaking Indians, these ceremonies with large dance
presentations were so important that when the Spanish tried to outlaw them in
Guatemala, the Indians offered 1,000 silver peso bribes to be allowed to dance
during the fair, according to the author of The Pipil-Toltecs of Guatemala. He
also reported that at one point the Spanish governor in Guatemala tried to get
the Inquisition in Mexico City to outlaw these large dance presentations, but
the Inquisition refused to rule on the issue. The fact that the dances the
Spanish wanted to outlaw were still being done in the 20th century
is a tribute to their desire to keep their traditions. Examples of the modern
Guatemalan Maya dance “Dance of the Deer” reported from Antigua to Huehuetenango,
are also reflected on classic period Maya-Chorti vases from the Copan area and
such a Deer dance was going on in Classic Period Mayan village of Joya de Ceren, El Salvador
at the time of the eruption of the Ilopango Volcano which buried the town like
a Mesoamerican Pompei. These dances were seen as part of the sacrifices they
made to the Gods, and they may have considered them important to the success of
their crops or to the reproduction of domestic animals that they raised and
forest animals that they hunted. Letters from Mayors from places like Tegucigalpa during the colonial period also
petition the Catholic church to let the Indians dance during the fairs of that
city.
For the
constant wars of Morazan, he needed money. One possible source to get money
that he identified was to get a hold of the lands owned or controlled by the
Catholic church and sell them to Spanish speakers. Another source of money for him personally
was to make a deal with a Belizean Marshall Bennett to cut down the forest,
particularly on the North Coast which was not controlled by the Honduran
government,but rather free Indians, and export it, and with the proceeds
receive a salary. One of the anti-church moves was to refuse permission to
Spanish missionaries and missionary orders to be in Honduras, leaving the very
Catholic area of Honduras controlled by the Lencas without priests. In the past the Spanish church had complained
about the abuses of the Ladinos and
Spanish against the Indians and had helped the Indians legally protect their
lands as cofradia lands, but with the exit of the priests, who would raise a
voice if the government took all the cofradia lands? So during Morazan’s
presidency, the government expropriated all the cofradia lands of both Ladino
and Indian cofradias, reported Atanasio Herranz.
However,
this was not the end of the story. Laws against poor people are only as strong
as the government which publishes the law.
The Indians rose up in Guatemala and in Honduras. For example, Morazan
requested the arms of the militia of Olancho, and the militia said NO. The
fighting was almost continuous for the next 20 years and in the 1540, the
Honduran government now separate from the Central American Federation, issued a
law saying that all lands had to be registered, including cofradia lands,
collected in Antonio Vallejo in his “Rules for Land Surveyors” so obviously
they still legally existed.
During the
next 30 years, Honduran national governments tried various techniques to take
away Indian control of land. They formed municipalities, like US counties, with
the mayor’s office in a Ladino town, and departments with seats also in Ladino
towns. Indian mayors were in many places gotten rid of and reduced to assistant
mayors, with no salary or formal authority. Since the mayor, or alcalde,
controls the ejidal or jointly held lands of the municipality, this is also a
technique to get control of lands. Laws were also passed taking the vote away
from landless people or people who did
not have land titles (including most Ladinos, including mulatos, and Indians
not living in the colonial era Pueblos de Indios) and people who could not read
or write in Spanish, which included most Indians and most Ladinos, since there
were almost no public schools. These laws were also the cause of social
protest, including letters, and petitions, and court cases, but also armed
rebellion and escaping even high up into the mountains. Also sometimes the
Honduran military forces rose up against the Indians, such as levelling the
town of Mejicapa, Comayagua, near where the penitenciary is now, and trying to
put down the rebellions of El Paraiso and Olancho Indians. The Catacamas
Indians in Olancho rose up against General Zelaya, murdered him in the night,
and then fled to the mountains and their cofradia lands when he tried to
prepare to set fire to Catacamas a second time during the Wars of Olancho in
1865.
Fires of
archives, such as those of Ocotepeque, were also part of the plan to make
disappear the Indian land titles. The collecting of land titles to put them in
the National Archive by the same Antonio Vallejo, director of the archives, in
the 1880’s was also a process frought with problems and contributed to the loss
of the land of the Indians of Ocotepeque, now part of CONIMCHH (National
Council of Maya Chorti Indians of Honduras), which has a website.
During the
Liberal Reform, another law was issued against the lands of the cofradias, and
an Agricultural Law was published which permitted the confiscation of land of
people who had less than 5 manzanas and which was not used for products of
export agriculture like coffee. These laws are not included in Vallejo’s book
for land surveyors, but the Agriculture Law is included in his book “El Primer
Anuario Estadistico” which was published around 1889. The Liberal Reform also permitted Anti-Indian
vagrancy law which permitted land lords to basically pick up Indians and force
them to work for them, if the Indian could not prove he was “working”, reported
Honduran anthropologist Adalid Martinez. (How does a self employed farmer prove
he is working?) Not surprisely more
Indian uprisings occurred. In the 1890’s another Agrarian Reform law was passed
which was the first time the law that foreigners could not own land within 40
miles of the coast, which is in the microfilm collection of Honduran archives
in the University of Pittsburgh. It is
not in Antonio Vallejo’s collection of Agrian Land Laws for land surveyors
published in 1911, which probably contributed to the giving of land concessions
to United Fruit and Cuyamel Fruit in 1912 by the government of President Manuel
Bonilla the following year. It is not
certain that even today in this day and age of computers and Internet that
there is anywhere in Honduras a complete collection of Honduran land laws which
a potential investor might consult.
Not even
the Liberal Reform got rid of cofradia lands. In 1928 during the government of
Honduran President Paz Baraona, the government again made a law taking away
cofradia lands which was published by Marvin Barahona in his book on Collective
Memory, the State and the Indians of Honduras. This combined with the
introduction of how to plant coffee to Honduran Ladinos, who then needed lands
up in the mountains apt for coffee, precisely where the Indians lived, caused
increase pressure on Honduran Indian lands in Lenca, Nahua and Chorti areas of
Honduras. This led to the legendary
uprising of Lencas under General Gregorio Ferrera during the time of Carias
continued until 1933 and the death of Ferrera in struggles with the Carias
Army. But first the Lenca troops had managed to set fire to La Ceiba where
Standard Fruit was headquarted in 1929 and marched to the gate of the American
zone of Puerto Castilla where the Truxillo Railroad, part of United Fruit, was
headquartered and after defeating the few Honduran military troops in Trujillo
in 1932. The drastic measures of Carias of exile, death or jail and the death
of thousands of Indians, mostly Pipils and Lencas in El Salvador in 1932,
mostly ended the fighting of the Lencas for the question of land, but other
forms of resistence continued.
Doña
Natividad, the Lenca guide at the San Pedro Sula Museum, whose grandfather was
a Liberal general who fought against Carias and a leader of Lencas in Western Honduras,
said that Carias came to visit her grandfather, whom he never arrested or
exiled. For a Honduran President to go
an visit a Lenca Indian General in El Cerron, Yamaranguila, Intibuca in the
1930’s was not a minor project, as there was no way to get there except on mule
and travelling for days over paths in the mountains which became full of mud
and nowhere to stay on the way. The fact
that Yamaranguila still had cofradia land in 1994, when the municipal
government sold the last piece of cofradia land, known as tierra del santo (the
land of the saint), is probably partially a tribute to this general. More than
45 Lencas reportedly died of starvation in Yamaranguila the year the last piece
of cofradia land was sold, perhaps because the proceeds of the cattle or milk
there were used to help the poor of the community. This sale was reported in
Honduran newspapers including Honduras this Week before it went online in 1995.
The
cofradia of Yamanquila, Intibuca the Vara Alta of Moises (Tall Staff of Moses)
not only survived the loss of the land which economically sustained them and
the fair, which caused the loss of Guacascos in much of Honduras. But they also
survived the changes in the attitudes of the Catholic church in Central
America. In the 1940’s researchers in
Guatemala like Krystyna Duess and Brent Metz, and Garifunas, Chortis and Lencas In Honduras
report that the foreign Catholic missionaries, often Americans, who were
allowed to return to Central America after been banned by Francisco Morazan’s
government, took a hard stance against
the traditional practices of Honduran and Guatemala Indians. Doña Nativad, the
Lenca guard at the San Pedro Sula Museum tells of the American Catholic priest
who physically threw the Alcaldia of the Vara Alta out of the Yamaranguila,
Intibuca church, and built them a separate building in the 1940’s, because he
did not want chicha, corn beer, and the animals the Lencas offered to the saint
which often pooped on the floor before they were taken to the saint’s land, in
his church. The Lencas got so upset that they physically attacked him, and
other Lencas had to physically smuggle him out of Yamaranguila. The Catholic
priest cursed Yamaraguila and people say that is why it does not prosper and
lightening has hit the church twice since then. The fact that Yamaranguila can
not celebrate the Guancasco with other communities because the Catholic priest
does not permit the saint to go out has
been documented by researchers like David Flores. Yamaranguila celebrates its
Guancasco without the arrival of the other saint now.
In addition
to the problems with preists over traditional practices like dances and chicha,
traditional Chorti have also reported that there were complaints of withcraft
against them, both for medicinal plant treatments and other healing techniques,
and for belonging to cofradias, so that is one reason why most of the Chorti
cofradias died out, except the people who do the dance Moors and Christians in
Ocotepeque, Honduras and the cofradia of San Francisco, in Quetzaltepeque,
Guatemala. Also traditional people who
led Catholic prayers, called rezadores, were marginalized by the modern Catholic
Church report older Chorti rezadores. The Evangelical churches arriving in the
traditional areas of Honduras and Guatemala are even more against these types
of practices. Important leaders of religious ceremonies and healers stopped
working among the Chorti and the Pech due to changing religion to becoming
Evangelicals.
Honduran
Agrarian Reform Laws have also been used against Indian lands, including what
was left of cofradia lands. President Juan Manual Galvez started la colonia
Agricola (The Agricultural Colony) on lands that a Nahua Cofradia had land
title to, and where they were still living in the 1950’s. However, since Honduran law no longer
recognized the validity of cofradia lands, the government paid no attention to
protests by the Indians and settled people from Central, Western, and Southern
Honduras on alternating lots among them. Some Nahuas got land titles for lots,
others did not. The National
Agricultural University (UNA) was
originally started as a Demonstration Farm to show these immigrants and the
Nahuas living in the area how to farm
according to the development theories of the day.
According
to Adonay Lobo, who worked with the defunct NGO
A Mano which helped sell crafts, wealthy Hondurans could also go to the
INA and under Agrarian Reform Laws say, “Give me this land here. And that
village that is there, give me that, too.”
That is how Santa Barbara Indians sometimes also ended up without land, including
their cofradia land, and they had to move to next to the cattle ranch or coffee
farm that took their land and on top of it, have to work for the man who stole
the land, because there was no other work locally available. Adalid Martinez who is from the village of
Atima, Santa Barbara which is partly Lenca according to the 2001 census
remembers his father working for L1 a day in Santa Barbara in the 1960’s, which
was lower than the wages paid by the banana companies in the 1920’s.
The
Honduran government is planning on taking land away from Garifunas on the North
Coast and away from Lencas of Suyapa near Tegucigalpa and along Rio Blanco in
Santa Barbara and along 52 other rivers for hydroelectric plants such as the
¨Patuca III Dam in Olancho and the dam near Betulia in Santa Fe, Colon, as well
as 250 new mining concessions under the new Mining Law, the Models Cities Law,
and a law on the “Unused Assets of the State” and these new laws are sparking marches
and protests in Honduras among traditional peoples. Many people are surprised,
but in fact Honduras’s native peoples have long traditions of protesting
against unpopular laws in various ways including armed rebellion, flight, using
the courts and similar institutions, and seeking allies outside the country
separate from the local elite, such as the Catholic church or British arms
merchants, the King of Spain and his officials. And sometimes the Indians and
other popular groups are successful in getting redress.
While it is
true that Pedro Alvarado conquered Guatemala and Honduras, the Spanish
government did a judicial review of his work and found massive human rights
violations even for the 16th century and confiscated all of his
goods. The Honduran governor who fed the Indians of Agalteca, Olancho to the
dogs, and set fire to them in their houses and enslaved 2000 Olancho and Colon
Indians, spent a year in jail in Nicaragua for causing an Indian issurection
and due to ruining his health in jail, he shortly thereafter died and the
Spanish lost control of much of Olancho and Colon. General Francisco Morazan
who is taught almost as a saint in Honduran schools himself died at the hands
of firing squad in Costa Rica. The also often lauded head of the Liberal Reform
and great friend of foreign investment in Honduras Marco Aurelio Soto died in
exile in the US, and his family needing money, sold his pre-Columbian art
collection to the Heye Foundation. That is why his collection is part of the
modern Central American Ceramics Exhibit at the Smithsonian. People do not rise
up against good governments and try to replace them, notes Honduran writer
Cesar Indiano in his very interesting and insightful analysis of Honduran
history Los Hijos del Infortuno (The Sons of Misfortune).
Since in
Honduras, most Hondurans have run out of places to flee to, the rise in
Honduran immigrants to the States, is also part of this trend. The movie
Harvest of Empire, distributed by Third World Newsreel, notes that the
unprecented immigration of Latinos to the US, many of them Indians from Mexico,
Central American and parts of Columbia affected by warfare related to the
cocaine trade, is a direct result of US government policies, or the policies of
US companies in Latin America.
The
Languages of the Mexican Indians who Arrived in Central
America in the Post-Classic
By Wendy
Griffin
The
Nahuas had begun arriving in Central America by the beginning of the Post
Classic period (around 900 AD), although there are controversies if some
settled in some places for example along the Guatemala Pacific Coast during the
Late Classic period, as claimed by the author of the Toltec-Pipil of Guatemala.
The language of the speakers of Nahua is
variously recorded in colonial and 19th century documents as “la voz azteca” (the Aztec language),
“mexicano” ( the language of the Aztecs or Mexicas), and “mexicano corrupto” (corrupt Mexican
language—a different dialect of Nahua spoken by the Pipils than that spoken by
the Aztecs). Now the names Nahua, Nahuat, Nahuatl, Pipil or Nawa are generally
used for the language. The word Nahua remains in place names in Honduras
While the
Nahua language is no longer spoken in Honduras as a language, and in Central
America only by some 30 -400 Pipils in El Salvador according to Wikipedia’s
article on Pipil and profesors from El Salvador, studies of Honduran Spanish like
those of Atanasio Herranz Herranz report hundreds of words of Nahua origin such
as cipote (child, little person), many foods like aguacate (avocado), most
crafts including petate (reed mat) and chichigüite (a craft to separate grains of
rice from the stalk, from the Nahua word chichigui-to scrape), many animals
like jolote (turkey), craft plants like hule (rubber), and medicinal plants
like nahuapate (the cure or medicine of the Nahuas) etc. The book of Alberto Membreño on Place names of
Central America (Toponimios de America
Central) shows Nahua origins for hundreds of Honduran place names. While time has shown that some of the place
names he identified as Nahua were actually in Lenca, as noted in Atanasio
Herranz’s introduction to the book, others are still clearly of Nahua origin.
Although
many Indians in Central Mexico speak Nahuatl, there are other Indians there
such as Masahua Indians. The fact that there is a place name Masahuat in
Western El Salvador and also in Western Honduras, makes us wonder if some of
the Indians identified as Pipils in Spanish colonial records were Masahua Indians.
The name of the Pipils comes from the Nahua word Pipiltin, the ruling class
from which both religious and political leaders were drawn.
Some Nahua modern place names in Honduras
include Ocotepeque (the mountain of the pitch pine—Ocote in Honduran Spanish),
Copan (from Copante, bridge in Nahua and wooden planks across a creek in
Honduran Spanish), Choluteca (from Cholulateca—people from Cholula). At the
time of the founding of San Pedro Sula in 1536, there were also communities
called Culhuacan (named for a Toltec founded neighbourhood in the Valley of
Mexico), and Chulula (named for the Valley and city of Cholula, Mexico. The
Nicaros claimed they were from two villages in the Cholula valley) that were given as encomiendas in Northwestern
Honduras. Calpules (from calpulli in Nahua meaning neighbourhood,
administrative unit, or land owned collectively by a lineage in Nahua) is a
common place name in Honduras. There are many places called Calpules in Honduras Santa Barbara
The
Chorotega Indians and Their Area
There are
two known groups of speakers of Oto-Mangue languages who passed through Honduras Cholula Leon Nicaragua Leon Mexico Central America were collected in the
Colonial Period and published in Monarquia Indiana
The
Chorotegas settled for a time in the Gulf of Fonseca
area, such as the department of Choluteca, probably displacing Matagalpas and
Lencas, but according to legends
collected in Costa Rica Costa Rica Costa Rica Honduras
The area in
the Sula Valley Lake Yojoa Trujillo Colon Trujillo Aguan Valley Agalta Valley Olancho Valley
One of the
arguments against the Ulua area and the Trujillo area being Chorotega areas, is
that when the Spanish came these areas, plus much of central and Western El
Salvador, the Department of Escuintla in Guatemala and the Payaqui
(Chorti-Nahua) areas of Esquipulas and Jocotan and Camotan in Chiquimula
Guatemala were heavily planted in cacao, which they exported. According to Anne Chapman, the Nahuas planted
Cacao while the Chorotegas did not. We already noted that the Classic Period
Mayas of Copan did not seem to plant cacao. There is a high match between areas with Nahua
place names and places where cacao cultivation was reported in Honduras or
other special resources were located
such as rubber (Ulanco-now Olancho, the place of rubber), obsidian
(Izalco), green stone (Tulito, in Colon on the Rio Paulaya), salt (Choluteca,
Escuintla) or gold (Naco, Sula, Quimistan area, Ocotepeque area, Ciudad Blanca
area, near Trujillo, etc.)
The Arrival
of Slave Taking Mexican Indians possible Cause of Abandonment of Copan and many
Lenca and other Indian sites
Attacks by
Nahua speakers and Chorotega speakers
and maybe even by Lenca speakers, have been theorized as possible reasons for
the abandonment of Mayan sites in the Valleys
such as Copan and in Camotan and
in Escuintla on the Guatemalan side of the border and in Northwestern El
Salvador, and of Lenca sites in the Valleys in Honduras at the end of the
Classic period around 900 AD. . The oral history of the Pech and the Jicaque
also report living in the mountains at this time, with the Pech saying if they
went to the valleys they got captured, sacrificed and eaten, while Classic
period sites that might be Pech are on lowlands. The Jicaques lived in the
Meredon Sierra in Cortes as well as in the mountains in Yoro and Atlantida at
the time of Conquest and into the 19th century, according to
Wolfgang Von Haagen. The oral history of
the Sumus like the Tawahkas of Honduras and the Mayagna of Nicaragua also
report they and the Miskitos abandoned the lowlands on the Pacific Coast to
hide in the mountains or the rainforest on the Atlantic side of Honduras or
Nicaragua. Matagalpas, sometimes called Pantasmas or Chontales (foreigner in
Nahua) in colonial documents, may have abandoned parts of eastern Honduras Central Nicargua
due to pressure of the Nahua speakers.
The main
colonial Indian towns in El Paraiso Department have Nahua names (Texiguat-Te
Sigua Well of the Woman or the Sirena/mermaid who takes care of the fish) and
Teupasenti (Teot is God in Nahua and in Jicaque). Some areas with Nahua names
like the Azacualpa
Valley
Evidence of Indian controlled trade continuing
even in the Sula valley during the colonial period, includes finding obsidian
in colonial contexts in sites like the Indian town (pueblo de indios) Ticamaya,
along the Ulua river which remained inhabited until the early 1800’s. One of
the main archaeological site around San Pedro that still exists is Currusté,
which the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History has interest in
converting into an open air archaeological
museum for the people in San Pedro area, but for various reasons that
has not happened yet. There is also a site Cerro Palenque in the town of
Santiago Pimienta also along the Ulua River which was an important town in Post
Classic and Colonial times as a stop for river traffic. The colonial era
Catholic church, now torn down, was clearly built on top of a temple mound.
An
important archaeological site Campos Dos outside of La Lima, Cortes was
destroyed by the planting of bananas there. The archaeological pieces from
there are in the National Museum of the American Indian and a span a period
from the preclassic or the postclassic. The Honduran Institute of Anthropology
and History has its regional office in La Lima.
The Post classic Indians travelled along the coast and rested at night
as they travelled, so it is not surprising the Mesoamerican artifacts are found
while building tourist resorts like Marbella outside of Tela. Near La Ceiba, there is a Mesoamerican type
archaeological site, owned by a family member of the late Honduran President
Azcona, according to the IHAH representative in La Lima, which the IHAH would
like to develop of tourism, but the family says they would like to do something
with the area. Honduran laws do not
permit many types of activities on known archaeological sites.
Most
pre-Columbian Indian sites in Cortés have been either looted for sale on the
illegal Pre-Columbian art market, and/or destroyed due to banana plantations
and later development for houses, factories and stores. The beautiful
collection of archaeological pieces of Banco Atlantida, now available for
viewing online, also reportedly came
partly from pieces dug up during the process of planting bananas on the North
Coast. The pieces in the San Pedro Sula Museum were mostly from collectors who
had bought them from huaqueros, the people who loot archaeological sites. Some
archaeological sites in the Cortes area are affected by Honduran gangs, known
as “maras”. To go to one site, I was recommended to get a municipal policeman
to go with me and another site I was told the mara from Planeta was active
there and it was impossible to go and visit it.
By Wendy
Griffin
In the San
Pedro Sula Museum, the arrival of the Mexican Indian groups like Nahua speakers
and Chorotegas, and also possibly of Mayan speakers of Chol, and Mayan traders
who spoke Yucatecan Maya in the Post Classic Period (900 – 1500 AD) is reflected in the disappearance of the Lenca
elite ceramic Ulua Polychrome in the
Department of Cortes at the beginning of the Post Classic. The new elite
ceramics in the area include Sula Fine Orange, Tohil Plumbate, and Naco
Bichrome. The San Pedro Sula Museum Tegucigalpa Central
America ’s only glazed pre-Hispanic ceramic. The ethnic affiliation
of Naco Bichrome and Fine Orange are debated, but according to the Wikipedia in
Spanish webpage, Tohil Plombiza, the name of Tohil Plombate in Spanish, is
associated with Toltecs. It was made in Central America, but has been found in
Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico more than 1,000 miles away, although it is not one of the
most important ceramics there points out Erlend Johnson, a Tulane archaeology
student. Also found with Tohil Plumbate in Santa Barbara and Copan Departments
and in El Salvador is a polychrome known as Las Vegas Polychrome.
Banco
Atlantida also has a lifesize clay statue of the Nahua speaker god of young
corn, Xipe Totec, which is often found together with Tohil Plumbate in Pipil
sites in El Salvador
Some people
see relationships between Fine Orange ware in the Classic Period in Cholula,
Mexico and a similar less fine monochrome ceramic there but with the same types
of designs there, and Sula Fine Orange Ware in the Sula Valley, in the Copan
Valley, and the Ciudad Blanca area, another Fine orange ware in the Pipil area
of El Salvador called Seibal Fine Orange, and the Incised Punctate ware in the
Northeastern Honduras area, including La Ceiba to Trujillo and the Agalta
Valley and Ciudad Blanca areas of Olancho which has the same s and dots and
zigzag and dots decorations as Cholula Fine Orange Ware. Other archaeologists think that it is
related to ceramics in the Mayan lowlands, reported Tulane archaeology student
Erlend Johnson. However, since some
Mayan lowland areas show significant Toltec influence in the Postclassic like
Chichen Itza and El Bosque in Copan Ruinas, the fact that the ceramic was in
these areas, too, does not rule out Nahua speaker influence. The fact that it
is not common outside of the collection of the San Pedro Sula Museum, might
mean it was trade ware, said Erlend Johnson. These Central American fine Orange
Wares and the Incised Punctate wares of Northeast Honduras
with designs that match those of Fine Orange in Cholula
Incised
punctuate ware is also found on the Pacific Coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica,
which is the same distribution as green stone axe gods, made from the green
stone at Tulito, Colon. Interestingly almost no green stone goods are found in
the San Pedro Sula Northern
Honduras and make it pay tribute, shortly before the Spanish
arrived. It is interesting that the Indians of Agalteca, Yoro still maintain the
oral history about the attack of Moctezuma on the North Coast of Honduras, as
reported by Tulane student Roberto Rivera. Ladinos who also can be partly
descended from Nahua Indians, also say that the person buried at the Cìudad
Blanca is Quetzalcoatl, apparently referring to the Toltec king Ce Acatl
Queztalcoatl who supposedly founded Payaqui (Among Nahuas) in Honduras and
Cuscatlan in El Salvador. According to
Gotz von Houwald, the Miskitos also have a story about the old drift man and
his son the Morning Star, using the Miskito word for Morning Star. Quetzalcoatl represents the Morning Star
among Nahua speakers. According to
Miskito Scott Wood’s book on the history of the Mosquitia, this king Morning
star united all of the Mosquitia under him. The Toltec king Ce Acatl
Quetzalcoatl supposedly died at Huetlapalan, which Hernan Cortes described as
10 days east of Trujillo, and that is why that name is associated with the
Ciudad Blanca area in Honduras as noted in the video on the Ciudad Blanca on
Youtube.
Connections
of Quetzalcoatl to the North
Coast
Naco
Bichrome, an elite ceramic associated with the Postclassic town of Naco Santa Barbara San Pedro Sula
Museum
When Hernán
Cortes arrived in Trujillo in 1524, he reported the chief priest was called
“Papa”. According to Michael Coe in his
book Mexico temple of Quetzalcoatl Trujillo
There is a
controversy if the place names that end in –gua like Comayagua, Managua, Toquegua
(place name in the Ulua Valley in 1537, also a last name in the Ulua Valley
during the early contact period), Tonjagua (now San Esteban, Agalta Valley,
Olancho) or start with Gua- like Guatemala City are in Nahua or not. All of
these places have been associated with Nahua speakers by some people. Guatemala Guatemala Trujillo
This
matches the Pech stories, collected by Dr. Lazaro Flores, that their enemies
worshipped evil spirits during storms. The Pech still tell the story of how the
Morning Star and the Evening Star killed the Night Jaguar to make a flute made
of jaguar bone and special black wax.. This flute is called in archaeological
reports of NE Honduras an “Aztec flute”. and
one was found near Trujillo San Pedro Sula Museum
Quetzalcoatl
and his wife were the chief gods among the Pipils of El Salvador according to the
Wikipedia in Spanish sites on Mitología
Pipil (Pipil Mythology) and Señorío de Cuscatlan (The State of Cuscatlan, which
was located in Central and Western El Salvador which was supposedly founded by Ce Acatl Topiltzin
Quetzalcoatl, a Toltec leader, who also has his own Wikipedia in Spanish
webpage). The Cakchiquels in their book The Annals of the Cachiquel called this Pipil state Acatan (which could
mean the place of Acatl. In addition to
being the name of the Toltec leader, Acatl is a reed, the same as Tule in Honduran Spanish and in
the Nahua place name Tullan, the place of Tule, according to tradition a former
Toltec capital in Mexico.). The numerous
places in Honduras called Agalteca, including Agalteca, Yoro and Agalteca,
Francisco Morazan were also sometimes spelt Acalteca by the Spanish like Cortes,
could mean in Nahua people from Agalta (the valley near San Esteban, originally
called San Esteban Tonjagua), or people of Acatl, the leader, or Acatan, the
place of this leader. The name of the dance from Jutikile, Catacamas, Olancho
la Aguateña, could also be related to these words and the name of the Aguan
River and the town of Aguanteca, Olancho. Jute is the local word, perhaps from
Nahua, for a snail that lives near
streams, which is eaten cooked in chile sauce when there is no other meat or
fish to eat. Jute snail shells are
common in archaeological sites that might be Nahua related. The place name
Juticalpa, Olancho is also probably related to Jute, the snail. The many place
names with –quire like Aguaquire, Conquire, Jamasquire, might be related to the
Nahua word –quile, which since Pech almost never used the sound of l, they
might have pronounced them Aguaquire instead of Aguaquile.
Traditional Crafts reflected in the San Pedro
Sula Museum Pre-Columbian Collection
By Wendy
Griffin
Besides
ceramics, the San Pedro Sula collection includes many other crafts including
stone axe heads, known as thunder stones in Honduras, and obsidian tools such as arrowheads, lance
points, knives, scrapers and awls for sewing leather, like making the Honduran
leather sandals called caites, in Honduran Spanish and Nahua. These obsidian
tools were probably made in Naco, Santa Barbara which had over 100 times more obsidian than any other
known site in northern Honduras. However, the obsidian itself probably came
from the mines in La Esperanza, Honduras Izalco , El Salvador
My Pech
friend Doña Juana had an interesting story about thunder stones. Her Pech
grandmother had told her that these stone axe heads were thunderstones and one
day lightening hit a tree near their house in Olancho. The grandmother examined
the tree and found at the base of the tree that there was one of these thunder
stones, which she felt proved her point that they were from the thunder, that
it had gotten there being thrown with the lightening. The Wikipedia article on
thunderstones is very interesting, that thunderstone beliefs have been reported
all over the world, including Africa and Oceanica and were even common in
Europe until the 19th century.
The Nahuas of Olancho have found these stones, too, and the Ladinos of
Olancho also identified these green stone axe heads as thunderstones, which
some groups used for magical or healing purposes. Osvaldo Munguia, the director
of MOPAWI, also reported finding one on
the bank of the Patuca river in the Mosquitia.
The San
Pedro Sula Museum has a number three legged corn grinding stones, most with
carved heads, and a stone my Pech friend Juana Hernandez said would be good for
mashing yucca to make sasal, a traditional bread among the Pech, the Miskitos,
and Tawahkas.
The San Pedro Sula Museum
The
technique used for spinning cotton with a malacate and a stick known as an huso
which are shown in the photo at the Museum has been reported among Mayas,
Lencas, and the Pech. Malacates have been found in Pech region during the
Classic Period (300-900 AD). The stone with grooves in it such as in the San
Pedro Museum has been found in the Trujillo area, the Agalta Valley, and in Santa
Barbara, and is used to beat cotton
fibers to make them easy to spin among the Lencas, according to Alessandra
Folleti’s study of Honduran crafts, not for beating bark to make bark
cloth. For bark cloth, generally known
in Honduras by the Miskito name of tunu, a similar slotted wooden tool is used
to beat the cloth and make it stretch out by the Pech, Tolupanes, Miskitos, and
Tawahkas. Bark cloth was known by the Mayas before they knew cotton, and a piece
of bark cloth was recovering the Classic Period (300-900 AD) offering with an
eccentric obsidian carving in Copan Ruins. The San Pedro Sula also has examples of the
bone tools used to weave tule reed mats,called petates. Petates are carved into the Popol Nah building
at Copan Ruinas and are painted on Classic Period Lenca ceramics found in the
San Pedro Sula Museum.
The San
Pedro Museum also have many seals, most made of clay, which they think were
used to make stamped decorations on cloth or on people’s skins. These seals
seem to be typical of the Lenca Indians of the Ulua area in the Classic Period,
rather than the Mayas, as they are identified in the Smithsonian’s exhibit of
Central American ceramics.
One of the
director of the San Pedro Museum’s passion is the study of the over 1,000 clay
whistles and ocarinas (whistles with various holes) that the Museum has. These whistles span the period from
preclassic to postclassic, but the majority are from the Classic period when
Lencas were the important inhabitants of the area near San Pedro Sula. The
Lencas still make small clay whistles today, some examples of which from La
Campa, Lempira were for sale in the Museum giftshop. The Lenca guard at the museum, Doña Natividad
used to make these kinds of whistles when she was young and living in El
Cerron, Yamaranguila, Intibuca. Only the
best pottery makers are able to make whistles.
When the Lencas would go on pilgrimages, for example to Esquipulas,
Guatemala, they would buy a whistle while they were gone and blow it when they
approached home, so their family would be expecting them. Peddlers also used to
blow whistles to let people know they were approaching their house. In the Postclassic and time of the Conquest,
they might have used some of the whistles to frighten the enemy shreaking with
whistles. There is a special field of archaeomusicology and Doña Teresa’s
article on the aerophones or clay whistles of the Sula area was published in
the first number of the journal devoted to this study.
One of the
most impressive pieces of the San
Pedro Sula Museum Mexico US Honduras Mexico Southern Mexico which the
Aztecs required many things not produced locally but available in Honduras Honduras
Statues of
Lenca area chiefs in the Comayagua Museum show a headdress of many green parrot
feathers. Many Hondurans feel the Honduran money, the Lempira, is worth less
now because it shows an Indian Lempira with no feathers (un Lempira desplumado),
while the old silver lempira coins had Lempira with many feathers. The many feathers seem to be more
historically accurate according to these statues. Trade in Honduran feathers
continued at least through the 19th century when Olancho feather
merchants noted collecting and selling 27 classes of feathers and some Scarlet
macaw feathers still find their way to Southwest US Indians. Honduran crafts
traditionally made with feathers like a Lenca mask or Garifuna Mascaro
headdresses often have to use colored paper now because of the lack of
feathers, few birds with the beautiful feathers still exist, and people who
knew how to make feather crafts in Honduras have mostly died. Most
crafts previously made with feathers by Honduran Indians like shields, staffs
with feathers on top of them and cloaks totally covered with feathers are no
longer made by modern Honduran Indians. The feather cloaks were reported by
Cortes in the Aztec court in Mexico City and they were still being worn by the
Nahuas of Catacamas, Olancho when William Wells arrived there for the fair
around 1865.
The San
Pedro Sula Museum also includes a lot of example of the plants that the Indians
of NW Honduras used including cacao, four colors of corn known by the Nahua
name elote in Honduras, cotton from trees, copal and copal encased in rubber, gourds
for making containers of many sizes some still have Nahua names like guacal,
jicaro, and tecomate, dye plants like achiote, also used for body paint among
the Pech and Nahuas. etc. In order to show the style of houses and the type of
crafts they would have had at the time of Conquest in Northwest
Honduras , two whole houses were built in the San Pedro Sula Museum
Although my
Pech friend Juana Carolina Hernandez was very impressed with all the displays
at the San Pedro Sula Museum, what impacted her the most and made her 90 year
mother in law cry was the 4 colors of corn. This started a whole conversation
on what type of corn is better for which food, what has happened to the seeds
that we don’t have these plants anymore and how the new seeds that exist do not
meet their requirements such as taste, behaviour in cooking, storage ability,
etc., how we have no way to get back what we have lost. I will share those stories another day.
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