Otomí Rituals and Celebrations: Crosses, Ancestors, and Resurrection

Abstract In the case presented in this article, an elderly resident from a rural community inundated by a large dam built in the late 1960s in central Mexico continues to celebrate a variety of rituals and ceremonies throughout the year. With his family and a few close friends, he venerates the community’s founding ancestors and sacred images in his home on the outskirts of San Miguel de Allende. As a result, despite the loss of the original community and the dispersal of its inhabitants, the traditions, values, and beliefs conforming to a general Mesoamerican pattern with a particular Otomí configuration--which emphasizes the worship of crosses, Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint James, the four cardinal directions and winds, sacrifice, military conquest, and the ancestors--are transmitted to the extended family members who reside together. The article proposes, therefore, that popular religion in Mexico, while retaining a central core of prehispanic elements and beliefs that forms the basis for its ideology and cosmology, is not necessarily conservative or static. It is continually created and re-created as traditions are transmitted both orally and through participation in rituals and ceremonies, while it simultaneously responds and adjusts to changes caused by external and internal factors that constantly restructure the relationships and patterns of participation of individuals and groups throughout the region.