The epigraph is telling of Nahua Christianity in an eighteenth-century Jesuit milieu. By all accounts the privilege and esteem of the Good Death Society, a Jesuit-sponsored sodality for the benefit of Mexico City Nahuas, was cause for celebration1; in fact, the resignation of the indigenous sacristan, who recorded the Society’s first election in a long series of entries in Spanish and Nahuatl in the official book of the Congregación de la Buena Muerte at the Colegio de San Gregorio, the Jesuits’ secondary school for Indians in Mexico City, reflected the cultural paradox of the juxtaposition of Indians and Spaniards.2 Furthermore, the semantics and praxis of elections differed between Spaniards and Nahuas. Nahuas had a cultivated corporate identity; the Spaniards also enjoyed common identification, but it was determined by a very different sort of social exclusivity.3
Brought to me by accident at the Archivo Histórico in the...
