Indigenous Nayarit:
Resistance in the Sierra Madre
By John P. Schmal
The Sovereign
State of Nayarit, located in northwestern Mexico, is surrounded by Jalisco
on the south and east, Zacatecas and Durango on the northeast and Sinaloa on the
northwest. On its west is the
Pacific Ocean. With an area of
29,908 square kilometers, Nayarit takes up 1.4% of the national territory of
Mexico. Nayarit is one of Mexico’s smallest states; only Aguascalientes,
Colima, Morelos, Tlaxcala and the Federal District are smaller.
The State of
Nayarit was named after a great Cora warrior that founded the Kingdom of Xécora
in the high country of the Sierra Madre Mountains. He was revered by his
subjects and elevated to the status of a deity. In the 2010 census, Nayarit’s
twenty municipios were occupied by 1,084,979 inhabitants. The capital of Nayarit
is Tepic.
Indigenous
Groups at Contact:
Tepehuanes.
The Tepehuan, according to Buelna (1891), received their name from the Náhuatl
term, “tepetl” (mountain) and “huan” (at the junction of).” The
Tepehuan belong to the Pima Division of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock and are
primarily located along the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre Mountains in
Durango and southern Chihuahua. They also occupied some of the mountainous
regions of northern Nayarit. The Tepehuanes Indians are usually associated with
Durango and with their massive revolt from 1616 to 1619.
Totorame.
The Totorame Indians, also known as the Memurte and Ponome, were farmers who
grew corn, beans, squash, chili and cotton. They were also regarded as skilled
artisans. The Totorame are closely related to the Cora Indians and occupied the
powerful states of Aztátlan, Centícpac, and Tzapotzingo in the northwestern
and coastal regions of Nayarit. The Totorame also inhabited the coastal area of
present-day Sinaloa as far north as Mazatlán.
Naarinuquia.
These were independent fishermen who occupied coastal regions of northwestern
Nayarit and spoke a Tepehuan dialect, Naarinuquia.
Teco-Tecoxquin.
This is a tribe belonging to the Aztecoidan branch of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic
stock located inland in southern Nayarit and in two detached areas in western
Michoacán.
Huichol
Indians.
The Huichol Indians (also known as Wirraritari or Wirrárika) are
believed to be closely related to the Guachichil Indians of Zacatecas and with
them form a branch of the Aztecoidan (Nahuatlan) family and Uto-Aztecan stock.
The Huichol were located in the mountains that ranged through western Zacatecas,
northern Jalisco and southeastern Nayarit.
The
Cora Indians.
The Cora call themselves Nayarit or Nayariti, a tribe belonging to the
Taracahitian division of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family. The Cora developed
agricultural methods that included the building of terraces to control erosion.
According to Salvador Gutiérrez Contreras, in “Los Coras y el Rey Nayarit,” the Cora’s success with
agriculture caused some of them to move into surrounding areas that are now in
the neighboring states of Colima and Sinaloa.
Linguistic
studies by Grimes (1964) have indicated that there are significant linguistic
similarities among the Pima, Tepehuán, Tarahumara, Yaqui, Cora, Huichol and Náhuatl
speaking peoples living in the Nayarit Sierra Madre and the coastal regions of
Sinaloa and Sonora. In fact, Grimes’ studies noted that the similarities
between the neighboring Huichol and Cora peoples were most pronounced,
indicating that they are a linguistic subfamily sharing a common kin ancestry.
The
Aztlán Theory
Aztlán (Azatlán) is the legendary place from which the Náhuatl
peoples came from. In fact, the word "Azteca" is the Náhuatl word for
"people from Aztlán." Náhuatl legends relate that seven tribes lived
in Chicomoztoc,
or "the place of the seven caves." Each cave represented a different
Nahua group: the Xochimilca, Tlahuica, Acolhua,
Tlaxcalan, Tepaneca,
Chalca, and Mexica. Because of a common linguistic origin, those groups also are
called "Nahuatlaca" (Nahua people).
Sometime around
1168 A.D., the Aztecs left Aztlán, eventually settling in a new place called
Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City). Scholars have speculated on the location of the
legendary Aztlán. In 1887,
the Mexican anthropologist Alfredo Chavero claimed that Aztlán was located on
the Pacific coast in the state of Nayarit. In the early 1980s, Mexican President
José López Portillo suggested that Mexcaltitán,
located in the municipio of Santiago Ixcuintla in west central coastal Nayarit,
was the true location of Aztlán. Many modern scholars have disputed these
theories. Nevertheless, the state of Nayarit incorporated the symbol of Aztlán
in its coat of arms with the legend "Nayarit, cradle of Mexicans."
First
Contact with the Spaniards (1524)
In 1524 Captain
Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura, a nephew of the Conquistador Hernán Cortés,
arrived at the site of present-day Tepic, Nayarit.
He was confronted by at least two thousand Tactoani Indian warriors who
turned out in force to give him a peaceful reception. He
was presented with a gifts consisting of a cup of gold nuggets and with silver
pieces by the Tactoani Indians.
The
Expedition of Nuño de Guzmán
Feuding with
Hernan Cortez, Nuño de Guzmán left Mexico City in December 1529 and embarked
on a journey of destruction, marching through Michoacán and Jalisco, and
striking into what is now Nayarit after Easter 1530. During the next year, Guzmán
arrived in the area of Tepic. On July 25, 1532, Nuño de Guzmán established Santiago
de Compostela, the first capital of the province of Nueva Galicia. [On
May 10, 1560, the capital was moved to Guadalajara.]
Compostela was
founded on the site of Tepic, an indigenous town which received its name from
the Náhuatl words, “tetl” (stone) and “pic” (hard).
Later, Compostela was moved south, and Tepic returned to its original
name and eventually became the capital of the modern state of Nayarit.
According to
Gutiérrez Contreras, Nuño de Guzmán and his henchmen committed many
atrocities against the indigenous peoples of this area. The atrocities included
the burning at the stake of the Cora governor by Guzmán’s lieutenant, Gonzalo
López, and the murder of many Cora children. It is believed that these
atrocities and others led to the Mixtón Rebellion that started in December
1540. The rebellion engulfed many areas of Jalisco, southwestern Zacatecas and
southern Nayarit and lasted until February 1542 with Spanish victory.
The
Conquest of Nayarit (1592-1723)
The relentless
march of Guzmán caused many tribes to relocate, many of them joining and
becoming assimilated into the Cora and Huichol peoples in the Sierra. The
difficulty of the Sierra Madre terrain prevented the Spaniards from making any
serious attempts at conquest of Nayarit until 1592, when Captain Miguel Caldera
entered the Sierra and started communications with the Cora. But in the century
to follow, the Spaniards were plagued with frequent rebellions in many northern
locations of their colonial empire. From 1616 to 1618, the Coras joined the
Tarahumaras and Tepehuanes in a rebellion against the Spaniards that included
parts of Nayarit, Durango and Chihuahua.
The final
decision to subdue the inhabitants of present-day Nayarit was made in 1719. By
this time, drought, epidemics and famine had taken their toll on the Cora
people. Baltasar de Zunigi, Marquis de Valero and the 36th Viceroy of
Mexico, sent a large force to subdue the Coras and established the Presidio de
San Francisco Javier de Valero in 1721.
In 1721, the
Cora chief Tonati had led a delegation that met with Zunigi and the Spaniards
and said that the Cora would accept the rule of the Spanish Crown if the Cora
rights to their lands would be respected and their native government would be
respected. However, soon after the delegation had returned to Nayarit, Spanish
forces seized Mesa del Nayar in February 1722 and, by 1723, Zunigi’s force had
completed the conquest of the Coras, who were rounded up and confined within
eleven Jesuit-controlled villages. The Sierra thus became fully incorporated
into the Spanish colonial Empire.
The
Huichol Retreat
In contrast to
the Cora Indians, the Huichol were never congregated into nucleated mission
settlements and thus, according to Franz (1996), were never converted from their
“primitive pagan ways.” In his 2001 thesis for the University of Florida,
Brad Morris Biglow noted that, while the Cora Indians fought aggressively to
resist acculturation, the Huichol response was primarily to "flee” to
more remote locations in the Sierra Madre. According to Aguirre Beltran, the
Huichol retreat into the Sierra created a "region of refuge” and enabled
the Huichol to “resist the acculturative pressures around them.”
Nayarit
in the Nineteenth Century
The indigenous
peoples of Nayarit played some role in the independence movement of the early
Nineteenth Century. But the seizure of indigenous agricultural lands (primarily
those occupied by the Tepecano, Huichol and Cora) by Spaniards and mestizos led
to a rebellion against the Mexican Republic in 1857. The uprising, led by Manuel
Lozada, initially met with success when government troops were defeated in
Nayarit.
However, when
the French invaded the Mexican Republic, Lozada allied himself with
Maximilian’s forces as they entered Mazatlán (Sinaloa).
But with the defeat of the French and the execution of Maximilian I of
Mexico in 1867, Lozada’s fortunes turned and he was killed by the enemy.
However, some still consider Manuel Lozada the precursor of the agrarian reform
movement in Mexico and credit him with the eventual creation of the state of
Nayarit. There are monuments in his honor in the city of Tepic and the town of
his birth, San Luís de Lozada.
The
Road to Statehood
At the time of
Mexican independence, Nayarit was part of Jalisco. In November 1824, the
political constitution of the State of Jalisco was established, dividing the
territory into eight districts. Nayarit was called the Seventh District of
Jalisco. On August 7, 1867, after
the defeat of the French invasion, President Benito Juárez separated Nayarit
from Jalisco, declaring it to be the “Military District of Tepic,” under the
jurisdiction of the government.
On December 12,
1884, by order of Article 43 of the Federal Constitution, Nayarit was elevated
to the status of a territory separate from Jalisco.
This federal territory was divided into twenty municipios.
In February 1917 the Territory of Nayarit was elevated to the status of a
free and sovereign state under the provisions of the Constitution of 1917.
The state was called Nayarit in honor of Nayar or Nayarit, the 16th
century Cora governor who had defied the Spaniards.
The
Nayarit Censuses (1895-1921)
The 1895 Mexican
census found that only 3,033 persons in Nayarit spoke an indigenous language.
This figure rose to 4,166 in the 1900 census and 12,798 in 1910.
In the unusual 1921 Mexican census, residents of each state were asked to
classify themselves in several categories, including “indígena pura” (pure
indigenous), “indígena mezclada con blanca” (indigenous mixed with white)
and “blanca” (white). Out of a total state population of 162,499, the
residents of Nayarit were categorized as follows in the 1921 census:
The remaining
population identified as foreigners without racial distinction, chose to ignore
the question, or said “other.”
The
2000 Census
According to the
2000 census, the population of persons five years and more who spoke indigenous
languages in Nayarit totaled 37,206 individuals. The most common indigenous
languages in Nayarit were:
Indigenous
Municipios of Nayarit (2000)
Only four
municipios of Nayarit contained significant populations of indigenous persons in
the 2000 census:
Del Nayar,
located in northwestern Nayarit, about 16 miles (25 kilometers) northwest of
Arteaga, is located in the traditional Cora Indian territory.
In the 2000 census, 23,123 persons in the Del Nayar municipio were
classified as “Indígena,” representing 86.8% of the total municipio
population of 26,649.
The
Huichol in 2000
In the 2000
census, there were 30,686 persons five years of age or more who spoke the
Huichol language in the Mexican Republic. They
were primarily distributed across portions of four adjacent states:
While a
significant portion of the Huichol lived in the municipios of Bolaños and
Mezquital in northwestern Jalisco, the largest portion inhabited central and
northeastern Nayarit, primarily in the municipios of Tepic and La Yesca. The
town of La Yesca is located in Nayarit, on the Jalisco border, 55 miles (89
kilometers) southeast of Tepic, in an isolated part of Sierra Madre Occidental.
The
Mexicaneros in 2000
In 2000, only
1,422 residents of Nayarit spoke Náhuatl. These Náhuatl speakers are referred
to as Mexicaneros and it is believed that their ancestors were brought to the
area by the Spaniards during the Sixteenth Century. They live in an interethnic
area that includes parts of the states of Durango, Nayarit, Jalisco and
Zacatecas. In some areas, they live
side-by-side with Huichol, Tepehuanes and Coras.
The primary Mexicanero community in Nayarit is Santa Cruz.
The
Tepehuán in 2000
In 2000, 1,422
residents of Nayarit spoke the Tepehuán language. One branch of the Tepehuanes
lives in Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains of Chihuahua. A southern extension of
the Tepehuanes live in adjacent parts of Durango and Nayarit. Their primary
location is the northernmost Nayarit municipio of Huajicori.
1990
to 2010 Trends
Between the
censuses of 1990 and 2010, there has been a decline in the Cora population of
Nayarit from 47.3% (1990) to 41.4% (2000) and finally to 38.9% in the 2010
Census. On the other hand, the Huichol population has seen a corresponding
increase from 36.0% (1990) to 47.7% (2010).
The
2010 Census
In 2010, Huichol
was the 21st most commonly spoken language in Mexico with Huichol-speakers
representing 0.67% of all indigenous speakers. Tepehuano was the 25th
most commonly spoken language, followed by the Cora language (No. 26).
In 2010, 49,963
persons five years of age or more spoke indigenous languages in Nayarit. In
terms of indigenous speakers, Nayarit ranked Number 11 among the Mexican states,
with the Huichol the most commonly spoken language (47.7%), followed by the Cora
language.
The 2010 census also
included a question that asked people if they considered themselves indigenous,
whether or not an indigenous language was spoken. Nayarit was ranked Number 17
among the Mexican states with 10.1% of its residents 3 years of age and older
who were considered indigenous.
It is also worth noting that
the Cora Indians have the fifth-highest rate of monolingualism in the Mexican
Republic as of the 2010 census. In the latter census, 27.8% of Cora Indians were
regarded as monolingual. The monolingual rate among the Huchol was 14% (the
fifteenth highest rate).
The latest
edition of ethnologue indicates that today the Cora language is most common in
north-central Nayarit, while the Huichol language is most prevalent in northeast
Nayarit and northwest Jalisco.
Copyright ©
2014 by John P. Schmal. All Rights Reserved.
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