The Centrality of Nepantla in Conquest

Fray Diego Durán reports an anonymous Nahua as having characterized the religious beliefs and practices of his fellow Nahuas in terms of nepantla, i.e. as “betwixt and between” Christianity and Nahua religion (en medios), and as “neither one nor the other” or “neither fish nor fowl” (neutros).1 Given the all-encompassing nature of religion in indigenous Nahua life, we may safely say that Durán’s informant’s characterization applied to post-Conquest Nahua life in its totality. The Nahuas were experiencing nepantla.

Durán’s informant’s remark highlights one of the single most important concepts in indigenous Nahua philosophy. Nepantla characterizes a particular kind of process or activity: one consisting of middling mutuality and balanced reciprocity. I call such processes “nepantla-processes.” Nepantla-processes are dialectical, transactional, and oscillating; centering as well as destabilizing; and abundant with mutuality and reciprocity. They situate people or things in nepantlatli, “in the middle” of or “betwixt and between” two endpoints. Nepantla-processes are also simultaneously destructive and creative, and hence, transformative.

Nepantla functions both descriptively and prescriptively in Nahua philosophy. It plays a central role in Nahua metaphysics’ account of the nature of reality and of the human condition. It also plays a central role in Nahua wisdom, ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics, e.g., in their normative conceptions of the good life for human beings, good conduct, good cognizing, and good art. Nepantla accordingly figures prominently in Nahua prescriptions concerning how humans ought to conduct their lives in all respects: how to behave, think, feel, judge, speak, sing, dress, eat, create, weave, and work.

In what follows I first examine the notion of nepantla. Sections II and III explore the descriptive role of nepantla in Nahua metaphysics generally and in its conception of the human condition (respectively). Section IV discusses the normative role of nepantla in Nahua wisdom, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

Fray Alonso de Molina’s Vocabulario en Lengua Castellano y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana contains numerous entries for nepan-compounded or nepan-derived words.2 Let’s see what we can learn about nepantla by examining some of these.

First, consider the verbs: nenepantlazotlalo, “to love each other,” nenepantalzotlaltia (“to create bonds of friendship between people”), manepanoa (nino) (“to get married, to join hands”), motlatolnepanoa (“to agree on what is said”), nenepantlazotlalo (“to love each other”), nepanotl titotlapaloa (“to greet one another”), nepan tzatzilia (“to shout to one another or for those who are working to hurry one another”), and tictonepantlatalxilia (“to blame each other for something”). And consider the nouns: tenepantla moquetzani (“onewho puts himself between those who are quarreling in order to calm them”), nepantla quiza titlantli (“messenger between two people”), tenepantla tetzalan ninemi (“act of stirring up trouble among others”), nenepantlapaloliztli (“reciprocal greeting”), monepantlapopolhuia (“those who pardon each other”), and tlatolnepaniuiliztli (“agreement or conformity of reasons and opinions”).

Francis Karttunen suggests nepan- “conveys a sense of mutuality or reciprocity.”3 The foregoing words confirm this. The activities and processes designated are quintessentially relational, transactional, and dialectical. They involve dialogue, reciprocity, or mutual interaction between two of more individuals. They are social processes that occur in a distinctly social space that exists betwixt and between or in the middle of the relevant actors. This social space is also unstable, ill-defined, and ambiguous. The processes also appear to be simultaneously destructive and constructive. For example, the process of becoming friends, lovers, or marital partners destroys the participants’ prior identities while at the same time creating new ones. The nouns above likewise refer to something quintessentially social, transactional or dialectical: e.g. a “messenger between two people” and “agreement of conformity of reasons or opinions.”

Second, consider nepanoa. Karttunen glosses nepanoa (nitla, i.e. with a nonhuman object) as a reflexive verb meaning, “for things to intersect, unite, join together,” and as a transitive verb meaning, “to join, unite something, to examine something” (Karttunen 1983: 169). Campbell glosses it as “to unite one thing with another, to lay one thing on another” (Campbell 1985: 212). Such processes involve the mutual or reciprocal intersecting, uniting, connecting or conjoining of two (or more) things. Molina contains a second entry, nepanoa (nite, i.e. with a human object), that Campbell glosses as “to have intercourse with a woman or to push into a group of people” (Campbell 1985: 212). The corresponding noun, nenepanoliztli, refers to the activity of “copulation or carnal intercourse” (Campbell 1985: 212). Sexual intercourse involves the mutual and reciprocal uniting, transacting, commingling or joining together of two individuals.4 It is quintessentially social and occurs in a distinctly social space, i.e. one betwixt and between participating individuals. This space is also unstable, ill-defined, and ambiguous. Sexual commingling likewise appears to be simultaneously destructive and constructive. It destroys the prior identities of participants while simultaneously creating new ones. Their identities and lives become mutually conjoined, intermixed, and in the process, transformed. Sexual commingling also results in the birth of new human beings. In sum, nepanoa (in both senses) refers to processes or activities that are essentially social in that they consist of the mutual or reciprocal intersecting, intercoursing, transacting, uniting, connecting or conjoining of two (or more) things. They are also social in the sense of occurring in and among, betwixt and between, or in the middle of the relevant relata.

Mutuality, reciprocity, middlingness, and betwixtness-and-betweeness characterize those activities referred to by nenepanoa, “to join or mix one thing with another,” and by tlanepanuiuixoliztli, “act of shaking and mixing something together” (Campbell 1985: 212). Shaking and mixing are revealing examples. They are middling in a variety of ways. Let’s look at shaking. First, the physical process of shaking things together is itself middling. It literally takes place between two endpoints. It also involves a rhythmic motion that oscillates back-and-forth between the two endpoints. Second, shaking is middling in the sense that it involves the mutual interacting and reciprocal intermixing of more than one thing. It is social. Third, shaking places the original ingredients in a new physical position, one suspended betwixt and between the two peaks of its back-and-forth motion. It creates a dynamic, unstable and uncertain physical condition into which it places the ingredients. Fourth, shaking removes the original ingredients from their erstwhile ontological categories and places them into a new ontological category: one that is unstable, confused, and mixed up. The ingredients are now neither fish nor fowl, betwixt and between their original categories. Shaking involves the reciprocal and mutual co-creation of something entirely new: a tertium quid.

Shaking is therefore ontologically ambiguous since simultaneously destructive and creative. It destroys the original ingredients while also subjecting them to a transformative process of becoming something else. Shaking involves the mutual destruction of the original ingredients as well as their interactive transformation into something new: something that is neither one nor the other (neutros). By shaking things up, by confusing the originals, by placing them in a process of transition, shaking creates something new: viz., “something shaken or mixed together” (tlanepanuiuixolli). And with this we come upon a fundamental tenet of Nahua metaphysics: creation involves destruction.

Finally, when well executed, shaking results in the thorough balancing, homogenizing, or equilibriating of the relevant ingredients. Yet the attained balance is fragile and ultimately shortlived. Something shaken together is ontologically unstable since it continually risks becoming separated again. And indeed, so it will, eventually. Here, again, we come upon another basic tenet of Nahua metaphysics: balance is hardwon and ultimately fragile and shortlived. Things fall apart. Things get mixed up.

Consider next tlaxinepanoa (“to weave something”), tlaxinepanoliztli (“the act of weaving”), and xinepanoa (“to weave something, like mats, fences, or something similar”) (Campbell 1985: 212f.). Weaving along with woven products (e.g. fabric and mats) are extremely suggestive in Nahua thought.5 Weaving wonderfully exemplifies the above attributes of nepan- processes: mutuality, reciprocity, betwixtness-and-betweeness, and creative transformation. It is clearly a middling or centering activity in many senses. First, it literally takes place in the middle of the ends or sides of the loom. It consists of a rhythmic, back-and-forth motion that oscillates from one side of the loom to the other. Second, weaving involves the interlacing, reciprocal crossing over, the mutual enfolding, placing on top of, and overlapping of warp and weft threads. Third, it involves the mutual interaction of more than one thing. One interlaces two or more threads together so as to create a dynamic state of mutual or reciprocal tension. Warp pulls upon weft; weft upon warp. It creates a new, middle space of mutual tension; a space that exists only to the degree that such tension exists, only to the degree that warp and weft coexist in mutual balance with and against one another. The well-woven fabric holds its weave and shape, while the poorly woven one easily becomes warped, frayed, or unraveled. In this sense, weaving likewise involves the creation of an unstable ontological condition or state of affairs. Things become unraveled.

Weaving is ontologically ambiguous in the sense of being simultaneously destructive and creative. On the one hand, it creates something new: a structured fabric (tlaxinepanolli). It creates something that is neither warp nor weft yet at the same time both warp and weft held in reciprocal tension with one another. On the other hand, it destroys the prior identities of the individual fibers. Weaving is consequently a transformative process. It transforms individual fibers into woven fabrics. And so we return to the tenet of Nahua metaphysics: transformation is simultaneously a creative and destructive process. The creation of something new is predicated upon and emerges from the destruction of something prior. Artistic creating and transforming – which are simply instances of metaphysical creating and transforming – are what I call “nepantla-processes.”

In sum, weaving occurs in the middle, is itself a middling activity, and finally, it produces something that exists in the middle. The accomplished weaver (tlaxinepanoani) knows how “to middle” the threads, i.e. bring them into mutual balance with one another so as to create a dynamic state of reciprocal tension between them. She balances warp and weft so as to create a cualli (good) fabric.6 Weaving also involves, to borrow from Louise Burkhart’s characterization of spinning and sweeping, “an intersection of order and disorder,” as a single piece of fabric emerges from the collective disorder of spun fibers, loom sticks, treadle, heddle rods, shed stick, rolling stick, and batten.7 Weaving (along with embroidery and brocade) was also associated with sexual activity. And so we return to nepanoa.8

Cecelia Klein argues that weaving operates as a root or organizing metaphor of Nahua -- and indeed, all Mesoamerican -- philosophy.9 She characterizes the Mesoamerican conception of the cosmos as a “weavers’ paradigm” (Klein 1982: 1). Mesoamericans saw the cosmos as “bounded, defined, and contained by long, thin, essentially supple objects of a basically cord-like form,” and as a woven fabric consisting of “pliant cords stretched out as one a giant loom” (Klein 1982: 2, 4). The Nahuas conceived the cosmos as having thirteen layers – three underworld; one the earth’s surface; and nine upperworld. They conceived these layers as folded lengths of a single cloth – not as an ontological hierarchy or “great chain of being” (as is typically the case in Western metaphysics since Plato).10 The nine layers of the upperworld are well-ordered, like a well-woven fabric. The three underworld layers are ill-ordered, resembling a tangled mess of threads. The surface of the earth is also tangled, twisted, and crumbled. What’s more, time itself – or rather, time-space – travels in the patterns of the weaver’s weft: repeatedly oscillating in back-and-forth motion. Dennis Tedlock has accordingly suggested that Mesoamerican calendrical periods are more aptly conceived as folds of a cloth mounted upon a loom -- rather than as wheel-like “cycles” (as is customary in Mesoamerican scholarship).11 If Klein and Tedlock are correct, then it appears that the Nahuas understood the cosmos as the product of a nepantla-process such as weaving, and moreover, as something possessing the structure that we would expect from a nepantla-process such as weaving.

In sum, the foregoing verbs designate activities or processes that are middling in several senses. First, they are middling in the intransitive sense of occurring in the middle or betwixt and between two (or more) relata. Second, they are middling in the intransitive sense of involving back-and-forth motion, mutuality, give-and-take, reciprocity, and dialectical transaction. Third, they are middling in the transitive sense of doing something to their relata, viz., middling them. And fourth, they are middling in the sense of creating something new – a tertium quid -- that is ontologically speaking betwixt and between the original relata. These processes or activities occupy, use, and apply the middle as well as create a middling product. What’s more, they are ambiguous processes in the sense of being simultaneously destructive and creative. They destroy old identities while also creating new ones. They are metaphysically transformative.

Let’s quickly examine several nepan- compounded or derived nouns and adjectives. The referents of these appear to be either: creative processes (such as weaving); things that are the product of processes that are characterized by nepan-; or things that behave in a middling manner (e.g. messengers).

Consider anepanolli (“joining of waters that flow into some place”) and inpaniuhca yn ome atoyatl (“the junction of two rivers”). The former refers to a process: the mutual flowing together or confluence of waters resulting in their intermixing, commingling, and transforming. The latter refers to the place where this occurs: their junction, which is a place of continuous mutuality, reciprocity, and transformation. The confluence of two rivers is unstable and in transition. It is ontologically ambiguous since betwixt and between the two feeder rivers. It is simultaneously neither river yet both rivers. The confluence is also ontologically destructive and creative. It destroys the two feeder rivers while simultaneously creating a new one.

Although a post-conquest term, peso ynepantla ycac is extremely suggestive. Molina glosses it as fiel de la balanza or “needle or pointer of a balance.” The needle behaves middlingly, oscillating back-and-forth as a consequence of the mutually interacting forces (weights) of the objects tugging on the balance’s arm. It operates in a dynamic and unstable middle zone, betwixt and between two endpoints.

Two better known examples of nepan- words are onepanco and onenpanolco, both of which are commonly translated as “crossroads” (encrucijada de caminos). According to Wayne Elzey, crossroads served as a paradigmatic case of nepantla in Nahua thought. The Nahuas saw the crossroads as the center or middle of two intersecting paths. This intersecting creates of a new space, one betwixt and between the two paths; a marginal, anomalous, unstable, and ill-defined place; one that is ultimately “no place” at all. Finally, the crossroads is ontologically ambiguous since it is neither this path nor that path yet simultaneously both this path and that path.12

Crossroads are commonly depicted along with grass brooms, and therefore associated with the notion of sweeping. And the notion of sweeping, as Louise Burkhart argues, is closely associated with the notion of purifying.13 Crossroads were accordingly “important places to leave contaminants such as items associated with social misdeeds or disease.”14 Repenting adulteresses and courtesans, for example, came to expiate their misdeeds in the crossroads.15 By collecting filth, the crossroads made possible purification. And hence crossroads were conceived as “no places” of ambiguous power, betwixt and between filth and purity, simultaneously purifying and polluting. Like spinning, weaving, and sweeping, they represented the dynamic commingling or intersecting of chaos and order; ill-defined “no-places” of ontological instability, ambiguity, and transformation; potentially creative and destructive.

The terms otlamaxac and otlamaxalli are co-referential with onepanco and onenpanolco. Although themselves not nepan- derived terms, they offer additional insight into how the Nahuas regarded the crossroads.16 As “the crotch of the road” (otlamaxalli), the crossroads carried sexual symbolism (Burkhart 1989: 63). The crossroads, writes Burkhart, was viewed as “a dangerous, liminal … place of bifurcation (Burkhart 1989: 63). And so we observe once more a general thematic connection between the referents of nepan- containing or derived words, on the one hand, and sexual activity, on the other. Like sexual activity (and weaving), the crossroads is simultaneously destructive and creative, and hence transformative.

Let’s turn finally to nepantla itself. As we’ve seen, Durán glosses nepantla as “betwixt and between” (en medios) and as “neither one nor the other” (neutros). Molina translates “nepantla” as an adverb, meaning “en el medio, o en medio, o por medio,” i.e., “in the middle of something.” Elzey translates nepantla as the “center,” “middle” or “in between,” while Karttunen glosses it as “in the middle of something.” She claims nepantla derives from nepan- and –tlah. She writes, nepan- “appears only as an element of compounds and derivations and conveys a sense of mutuality or reciprocity” (Karttunen 1983: 169). –Tlah, in turn, is a locative compounding element conveying a sense of abundance. –Tlah compounds include, for example, tetlah or “rocky place” (tetl, “stone”), and cuauhtlah “forest” (cuahu(i)-tl, “tree”) (Karttunen 1983: 259). In sum, nepantla conveys a sense of abundant mutuality or reciprocity, and what’s more, a reciprocity and mutuality that derive from being in between or in the middle. Following Campbell’s gloss of nepan- as “middle” (Campbell 1985: 212), we might say nepantla conveys a sense of abundant middlingness.17

The fact that Molina parses nepantla as an adverb suggests that we ought to gloss nepantla as “mutually,” “reciprocally,” “middlingly,” or their inelegance notwithstanding, as “betwixtly-and-betweenly” or “neither-fishly-nor-fowly.” As an adverb, nepantla modifies primarily activities, processes, becomings, doings, or behavings. It tells us how, when, or where an agent(s) or thing(s) acts, behaves, or does something; or how, when, or where a process proceeds. It describes activities and processes as middling, betwixtly-and-betweenly, neither-fishly-nor-fowly, and abundantly mutual or reciprocal.18 To describe a process as nepantla is to say that it involves or consists of middling, “neither this nor that” mutuality or reciprocity. I call such processes “nepantla-processes,” and call what they do, “nepantla-middling” or nepantla-balancing.”

If this understanding of nepantla is correct, then we need to resist the tendency to reify nepantla that comes with treating it as a noun designating – or as an adjective modifying -- a static, settled, or stable state of being, state of affairs, condition, relationship, arrangement, place, or thing. Indeed, I worry that such common translations as “the middle,” “the center,” “in the middle,” or “in the center” lend support to this tendency.19 I thus urge caution when using these.

In sum, nepantla- activities and processes are dialectical, intermediating, transactional, oscillating, betwixting-and-betweening, middling, and abundant with mutuality and reciprocity. They suspend people or things in nepantlatli, i.e. in the middle, betwixt and between two endpoints or “extremities” (Campbell 1985: 212). They engage “fish” and “fowl” in a transformative process that destroys their original, independent and well-defined status as “fish” vs. “fowl” while simultaneously creating a tertium quid that is “neither fish nor fowl.” They suspend people and things in a dynamic, unstable and ill-defined ontological zone between two endpoints while also suspending them in an ill-defined conceptual zone between conventional categories: one in which people and things cut across as well as blur into the interstices between quotidian categories. Alternatively, nepantla-process place people and things within a borderland, i.e. a dynamic zone of mutual transaction, confluence, unstable and diffuse identity, and transformation.20

Nepantla-processes are transformative processes because simultaneously destructive and creative. Nepantla-processes such as mixing, shaking and weaving involve their respective ingredients in processes of betwixting-and-betweening during which the original ingredients become neither themselves nor their other. Nepantla-processes place things within a dynamic environment that is ill-defined, transitional, unstable, and unsettled. Having both lost its prior identity and subsequently acquired a new, unstable and ill-defined identity as neither this nor that, that which participates in a nepantla-process “cuts across or falls between classes and categories,” as Elzey puts it (Elzey 1976:325). In light of this, one might venture to say that nepantla-processes subject their relata to a dynamic zone that ontologically supersedes “either this/or that” in the Hegelian sense of subsuming this and that while also transcending this vs. that. The confluence of two rivers, A and B, for example, supersedes A and B in the sense that it is neither A nor B yet at the same time both A and B.21

The Centrality of Nepantla in Conquest-Era Nahua Philosophy

by James Maffie

Part I: Nepantla examined

Part II: Nepantla as a fundamental descriptive category of Nahua metaphysics

Part III: Nepantla as descriptive of the human condition

1 Fray Diego Durán, History of the Indians of New Spain, translated by Doris Heyden (Norman: University of Oklahoma, Press, 1994), quoted in and translated by Wayne Elzey, “Some Remarks on the Space and Time of the ‘Center’ in Aztec Religion,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl (XII, 1976), p. 324, and in Wayne Elzey, “Nepantla,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, Davíd Carrasco (editor-in-chief), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), vol. 2, p. 365. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the XXVII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, 2007. I’d like to thank my co-panelists, Willard Gingerich, Joanna Sanchez, Catherine DiCesare, Alberto Lemus-Hernández , and Alejandro Santana for their helpful comments.

2 Fray Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana, 4rth edition (facsimile of 1571 edition) (Mexico City: Porrúa. 2001). In what follows I rely primarily upon R. Joe Campbell’s invaluable compilation and translations of Molina’s entries in his Morphological Dictionary of Classical Nahuatl: A Morpheme Index to the Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana of Fray Alonso de Molina (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1985).

3 Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983) p. 169.

4 For additional discussion of nepanoa, see Alfredo López Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist, trans. by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997). Karen Powers tells us that Mesoamericans did not conceive sexuality as a form of violence or conquest (Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005], p. 27).

5 For a description of backstrap weaving in Mesoamerica, see: Patricia Rieff Anawalt, “Weaving,” in Davíd Carrasco (editor-in-chief) (2001), vol. 3. pp. 324-328; Cecelia Klein, “Woven Heaven, Tangled Earth: The Weaver’s Paradigm of the Mesoamerican Cosmos,” in Anthony Aveni and Gary Urton (eds.), Ethnoastronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the American Tropics (New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, No. 38, 1982), pp. 1-35; and Stacy B. Schaefer, To Think with a Good Heart: Wixarika Women, Weavers, and Shamans (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002).

6 See Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Arthur J.O. Anderson & Charles Dibble eds. and trans. (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1952-1983), Book X, pp. 36 & 86, for descriptions of the good and bad weaver, and good and bad seller of reed mats (respectively).

7 Louise Burkhart, “”Mexica Women on the Home Front: Housework and Religion in Aztec Mexico,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (eds.) (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 45. See also Anawalt (2001).

8 Burkhart writes, “the rhythmic, back-and-forth motion of weaving, its intertwining of separate threads into a single web is, like spinning, an obvious source of sexual innuendo” (Burkhart 1997: 48). Weaving fell under the province of the Xochiquetzal, who was also associated with sexuality.

9 See Klein (1982). For discussion of organizing or root metaphors, see: Timothy J. Knab, "Metaphors, Concepts, and Coherence in Aztec," in Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community: Essays in Mesoamerican Ideas, Gary H. Gossen (ed.) (Institute for Mesoamerican Studies: SUNY Press, 1986), pp. 45-56; Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974); Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); López Austin (1997); and James Maffie, A World in Motion: An Examination of Nahua Metaphysics in the Era of the Conquest (forthcoming).

10 See Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1933).

11 Reported in Burkhart (1997: 50). Kay Reed also explores this idea in her Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

12 Elzey (1976: 324-325). Pages 2, 3, 4 and 37 of the Tonalámatl de Los Pochtecas (Codex Fejervary-Mayer) contain depictions of crossroads. For further discussion of crossroads, see Guilhem Olivier, Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror”, Michel Besson (trans.) (Niwot: University of Colorado Press, 2003), and Mary Miller and Karl Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). Sahagún’s informants described the crossroads as a dangerous and “disquieting place, of apparitions and omens,” haunted by Tezcatlipoca, the arch sorcerer and mocker, and where strange events occurred and unearthly beings appeared at “’midnights’ (iooalnepantla)” (quoted in Elzey 1976: 324).

13 See Miller and Taube (1993), and Louise Burkhart (1997) and The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989). Spatial constraints do not permit discussing the concept of sweeping in more detail.

14 Miller and Taube (1993).

15 Olivier (2003:42); see also Burkhart (1989). According to Miller and Taube, the crossroads provided access to the Underworld. The Codex Laud, for example, contains an image depicting this (Miller and Taube 1993: 71).

16 Molina glosses maxaltic as “something divided like a road or the crotch of a tree.”

17 According to Karttunen nepan- derives from ne + pan. Ne- functions as a nonspecific reflexive object prefix, and pan-, as a postposition meaning, “on the surface of, for or at a particular time (Karttunen 1986: 186). López Austin suggests nepan derives from panoa, which he glosses as “to throw one thing on top of another” and to place “one long object over another of equal length so that they cross, resulting in the geometric shape of a cross” (López Austin 1997: 108). López Austin also observes, “the shape of the cross was very important in [indigenous] ritual symbolism.” Terms containing nepan were commonly used to designate articles commonly employed in religious ceremonies such as strands of flowers. The Nahuas later referred to the Christian cross, for example, as cuauhuitl nepaniuhtoc, “the planks that are crossed” (López Austin 1997: 108; see also figures 10a-e, p. 109).

18 Elzey (1976: 234) writes, “A place, state, figure, or situation is nepantla when it is unstable and in transition from one status or position to another” (emphasis mine). Molina contains the closely related word, nepanotl, which he glosses as “unos a otros, o unos con otros, o los a los otros,” which Campbell glosses as “one another, reciprocally,” and Karttunen as “reciprocity, mutuality” (Campbell 1985: 212; Karttunen 1983:169). Karttunen tells us that nepanotl is used primarily in adverbial constructions, with the sense “mutually, reciprocally.” (Ibid.) It would thus appear that nepan- processes are aptly modified by the adverb nepanotl and thus characterized by mutuality or reciprocity.

19 Although my understanding of nepantla is deeply indebted to Elzey, I find that many of his remarks tend to reify nepantla. For example, he writes, “The ‘center’ as nepantla is a marginal and ill-defined place or time…” (Elzey 1976: 325), and nepantla is “descriptive term of an unresolved, boundary situation – anomic and/or potentially creative” (Elzey 2001: 366). This tendency to reify is found in recent scholarship in border studies. Lisbeth Haas, for example, writes, “indigenous people experienced a state of nepantla…” (Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California: 1769-1936 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], p.28). Haas also dubiously characterizes nepantla as “cultural woundedness (p.43).

My understanding of nepantla is also indebted to: Willard Gingerich, "’Chipahuacanemiliztli, The Purified Life,’ in the Discourses of Book VI, Florentine Codex," in Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan, Part II, J. Kathryn Josserand and Karen Dakin (eds.) (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1988), pp. 517-544; and Barbara Myerhoff, Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), “The Huichol and the Quest for Paradise,” Parabola 1 no. 1 (1976), pp. 22-29, and "Balancing Between Worlds: The Shaman's Calling" Parabola 1 no. 2 (1976), pp. 6-13. Neither Gingerich nor Myerhoff explicitly discusses nepantla as such. Rather, they discuss indigenous Nahua and Huichol notions of balancing and equilibrium (respectively). I nevertheless interpret both as in effect discussing nepantla. Their work strongly suggests that the concepts of nepantla and nepantla-balancing are rooted in indigenous Mesoamerican shamanism.

Molina contains the corresponding noun, nepantlatli, “the middle part between two extremes” (el medio entre dos estremidades), and corresponding adjectives, tenepantla, “among others,” (en medio de algunos, o entre otros), and tlanepantla, “in the middle” (enel medio) [Molina (2001), Campbell, op. cit., p.212.)]. Presumably those people or objects subjected to nepantla- activities or processes are aptly described as tenepantla or tlanepantla (respectively).

20 See Miguel León-Portilla, “Testimonios nahuas sobre la conquista espiritual,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 11 (1974), pp. 11-36); Jorge Klor de Alva, “Spiritual conflict and Accommodation in New Spain: Toward a Typology of Aztec Responses to Christianity,” in George Collier, Renato Rosaldo, and John Wirth (eds.), The Inca and Aztec States: 1400-1800 (New York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 345-366; and Hass (1995). For a provocative contemporary discussion of the notions of mestizaje and the borderlands, see Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).

21 It thus makes no sense to ask which river, A or B, is the confluence of the two. Understanding nepantla- relata and processes – and as we shall see below, teotl -- would thus seem to require a non-binary (i.e. non-either/or) style of thinking and knowing. For further discussion of Nahua epistemology, see Miguel León-Portilla, La Filosofía Náhuatl: Estudiada in sus Fuentes (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2001); Willard Gingerich, “Heidegger and the Aztecs: The Poetics of Knowing in Pre-Hispanic Nahuatl Poetry,” in B. Swann and A. Krupat (eds.), Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 85-112; and James Maffie, "Why Care about Nezahualcoyotl? Veritism and Nahua Philosophy," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32, (2002a), pp. 73-93; "To Walk in Balance: An Encounter between Contemporary Western Science and Pre-Conquest Nahua Philosophy," in Science and other Cultures: Philosophy of Science and Technology Issues, Robert Figueroa and Sandra Harding (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 70-91; “Aztec Philosophy," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005) http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aztec.htm.