Gods on boats

The Columbian Exchange was the movement of animals, people, and diseases across oceans. But people brought more than biological goods. Cultural symbols, including gods, traveled too.

Millions of people made the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Many were forced. Many others came as colonizers seeking to force their way of life on those they encountered. But this wasn’t a one-way cultural exchange. Religious syncretism is when different belief systems blend to create something new. In this article, we’ll explore one example: the Spanish conversion of Mexico City’s indigenous people. How did Christianity change Mexico City? How did Mexico City change Christianity?

Layers of belief in Mexico City

Below is a picture of the Plaza del Zócalo in Mexico City. That big church is the Metropolitan Cathedral, a center of Mexican Catholicism. But this square was once the center of the Aztec religion. Across from the Cathedral lies the ruins of Templo Mayor. It was the most important temple in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. This one area in Mexico City has served as a center of Aztec belief, Catholicism, and Mexican nationalism. For centuries, the ruins of an indigenous temple lay buried in the shadow of a Catholic cathedral. This view might look like it represents Christianity obscuring indigenous religion. However, the real story is more complex.

Strategies of conversion

The Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, sacked Tenochtitlán in 1521. They tore up the city’s temples and pyramids and renamed it Mexico City. Historians often say the Spanish conquistadors wanted “Gold, God, and Glory.” The conquerors wanted to win treasure, spread Christianity, and bring glory to themselves and the Spanish Empire, in other words. Let’s focus on the second “G”—God.

Soon after Cortés defeated the Aztecs, Catholic missionaries arrived in Mexico. Missionaries are people who travel to foreign places to promote their religion and try to convert people to it. One of the top priorities for the Spanish was Christian conversion. The Spanish wanted the support of the Pope, who, as the leader of the Catholic religion, was very powerful. They worried that people would use their indigenous symbols to organize revolts. So, Spaniards burned the temples, symbols, and books of the Aztec and other indigenous peoples. Often, when they tore down a temple, Spanish missionaries built a Catholic church over its ruins.

The early years of the Spanish conquest were brutal. The Spanish also forced people into slavery, tore families apart, and killed those who resisted. This started a cycle of indigenous resistance and Spanish violence. Indigenous peoples also watched millions in their communities die from European diseases that their immune systems were not prepared to fight. The Spanish had stronger immunities to the diseases they brought and didn’t face as much death. This led many indigenous people to question their gods’ protection. Some were motivated to convert willingly to Christianity.

Furthermore, Spanish missionaries’ quieter methods were often more effective than the brutal actions of the conquistadors. For example, in Mexico City, missionaries took the sons of Aztec nobility from their families. The religious leaders moved the Aztec boys to new Christian schools. There they were taught the Catholic religion and obedience to colonial leaders.

Indigenous strategies

The conversion of the Americas often gets called a “religious conquest.” But elements of both religions blended together. Some indigenous people saw similarities between Catholicism and their Aztec religion. For example, each religion had ranking systems for priests, and similar symbols and rituals. Before Spanish conquest, the Aztecs forced new gods on conquered peoples as a political tool. So, societies in Mesoamerica were used to adopting the gods of their conquerors. Indigenous peoples often did not totally abandon their old rituals and gods. Thus, Catholic missionaries often found images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary alongside statues of indigenous gods. As you’ll see later in this article, evidence of syncretism can still be observed in modern Mexico.

Some indigenous people converted to Catholicism for their own protection. Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas convinced the Spanish king to ban the enslavement and abuse of indigenous peoples. For many other indigenous people, conversion was an opportunity. Becoming Christians gave indigenous people a better position in colonial society. As you can see, conversion was not a simple act of acceptance or rejection.

Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Perhaps the most important examples of religious syncretism in Mexico City is the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. According to later stories, in 1531, an indigenous man named Juan Diego was on the Hill of Tepeyac in Mexico City. He claimed to witness visions of the Virgin Mary. She spoke in the indigenous language Nahuatl. Juan Diego claimed she directed him to build a church. Her image miraculously appeared on his cloak, he said. Juan Diego convinced Catholic leaders to build a shrine and church, which they dedicated to “the Virgin of Guadalupe.” By the seventeenth century, the shrine was a popular religious site for visitors. The image of the Lady of Guadalupe emerged as an important symbol of belief. Indigenous converts especially saw her as their protector.

Some historians argue that this story was a Spanish conversion strategy. They believe it was meant to justify the building of a Catholic church on the ruins of a shrine to the Aztec mother goddess, Tonantzin. Other historians claim that this tradition is the result of syncretism between the worship of the indigenous Tonantzin and the black Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura.¹ Eventually, the holiness for these two religious images blended into one.

Whatever the truth, the Catholic Church celebrated the story of Juan Diego and the vision. The popularity of the virgin soared among both Spanish and indigenous communities. The original small chapel has expanded into a modern massive basilica, or church. The Lady of Guadalupe also became a symbol of Mexican nationalism. Revolutionaries carried her image into battle during the Mexican War of Independence in 1810 and again during the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The Basilica is visited by 20 million people each year. That’s more than visit the Vatican, the Pope’s residence, in Rome.

The Lady of Guadalupe shows how indigenous belief and colonial conversion can blend in complicated ways. This place served as a religious destination for centuries before the Spanish arrived. It remains so centuries later. The Spanish destroyed a shrine to an Aztec mother goddess and replaced it with a shrine to the mother of Jesus. In images, she is portrayed in a European style but with dark skin. She stands on a moon, wreathed by the sun— important elements in the Aztec religion. Indigenous converts adopted the Lady of Guadalupe as their protector, and some still call her Tonantzin. They might have been praying to a different figure, but they were praying for the same reasons and at the same site as their ancestors. And three centuries later, Guadalupe remained a symbol of Mexican unity.

Blending religions

As indigenous communities converted, beliefs and rituals blended. Catholic missionaries appropriated (re-used for their own purposes) indigenous symbols. Converts brought old practices to the new religion. Indigenous festivities fell on the same days as Catholic holy days. The Catholic practice of confession mixed with similar indigenous rituals. Indigenous symbols were incorporated into Christian crosses. The sacrificial basins once used to collect blood during Aztec sacrifices were repurposed for Christian baptisms. And, as Catholic tradition was translated into Nahuatl, the languages of faith blended.

Religious syncretism created a new Catholic culture in Mexico. In 2020, Mexico is the second-largest Catholic nation on Earth, behind only Brazil. Latin America is home to 425 million of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. The current Catholic Pope, Francis, was born in Argentina. And every year, millions of Catholics make the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to pray at a site that once held a shrine to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.

This refers to the statue and shrine featuring a dark-skinned Virgin Mary figure at a monastery in Extremadura, Spain. The shine has been a religious destination since the fourteenth century.