SURVIVING THE "CONQUEST": AMBIGUOUS DISCOURSE IN THE NAHUATL

METAPHORS OF FRAY ANDRÉS DE OLMOS

Craig A. Hanson and Judith M. Maxwell

Paper presented at the 93rd annual meeting of the American Anthropological

Introduction

In his work on Tagalog society during the period of early Spanish rule in the Philippines,

Vicente Rafael (1988:ix-x) commented on the semantic relationship between the Spanish words

conquista (conquest), conversión (conversion), and traducción (translation). Conquista signifies

people. Conversión means the act of changing a thing into something else; in common usage, it

is the act of bringing someone over, persuading them, to a religion. Conversion and conquest are

processes of penetrating another's territorial or cultural domain and making it your own. Rafael

then notes that Conversión can also indicate the substitution of a word for another of similar

significance, and therefore approaches the idea of translation. Traducir (to translate) is

synonymous with convertir (to convert). Translation denotes events that take place within and

between languages. It is linked to the explanation and interpretation of meaning and intention.

Where conquest calls for the conversion of interest, translation expresses and relates interests and
ideas within and across linguistic boundaries.

Because the power of translation (the "expressing in one language what has been written

or previously expressed in another") involves the transfer of meaning from one language to

another, it necessarily also involves the sociocultural motivations of the colonizer and the

colonized. Although the emergence of world systems theory makes the secular motivations of

the colonizers reasonably clear, Spanish colonial policies of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries were intimately tied to evangelization. Evangelical methods relied on the

dissemination of Christian ideas through translation. The colonized were not passive in their

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acceptance of the new world order, however, and through translation saw the possibility of

marking themselves off from the unexpected and unknown forces that confronted them. The role

of translation in the conquest and conversion of native peoples from Cuba to Cuzco and Mexico-

T‘nochtitlan to Manila, provides a perspective from which to inquire into one specific universal

structure of response to Spanish rule.

Translation, Ambiguity and Subforms

Todorov (1984) introduced the innovative view that New World native chronicles of the

early European contact period were carefully construed polemics motivated by the resistance of
the authors to cultural assimilation. The research we present in this paper supports and amplifies

Todorov's thesis by adding that, in colonial scenarios, the act of translation, the transfer of

meaning from one language to another, can serve to both destroy and preserve extant social

codes (Vicente 1990:211). Translation involves not only the ability to communicate in a

language other than one's own, but the capacity to reshape one's thoughts and actions in

accordance with the new language's accepted forms. It thus corresponds with the need to submit

to the norms of a native speaker's community or sociocultural order. By "deferring to

conventions of speech and behavior (which, precisely because they are conventions, antedate

one's intentions), one in effect acknowledges what appears to be beyond oneself "(Vicente
1990:210).

What is "beyond" is ambiguous in meaning. Ambiguity in discourse is one result of

translation. These ambiguities can be manipulated to express multiple voices, multiple intentions

during attempts to transfer meaning between two different languages and cultures. According to

Paulson (1990), ambiguity does not necessarily result from mental vagueness, but may be a

powerful sylistic means of increasing the content potential of a text. The possibility of figurative

language and the semantic baggage each word or phrase carries with it multiply potential

meanings. Translation can therefore lead to message within message constructions similar to

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Sapir's postulate of language "subforms" as group emblems of solidarity (1949:15-16). These

subforms serve to mark the native translator/interpreter's message off from the mendicant's

intentions and meanings which aim to destroy preexistent sociocultural codes and instead act to

preserve and transmit them.

Ambiguous Discourse: An Early Example from Mexico-Tenochtitlan

Subforms in native texts from the Spanish colonial empire have been noted in the 1610

Castillian grammar by Tagalog author Tomas Pippin (Vicente 1990) and in the Huarochirí

manuscript [ca. 1600] by an anonymous Quechua of Andean Peru (Paulson 1990). Both
manuscripts were produced in association with missionaries' evangelical activities. Here, we

focus on another case of the same phenomena but from the first half of the sixteenth century in

Mexico. The case is significant because the Spanish developed their twin tactics of conquest and

conversion in the Mexica empire centered at Tenochtitlan. The methods for conquering and

converting native populations were determined in large part by Spanish experiences in New

Spain. Among the mendicant orders responsible for conversion of the native populations to

Christianity, the Franciscans dominated in numbers and influence. They developed the strategies

that the other orders followed (Burkhart 1989:16). Their familiariaty and reliance on tropes for

purposes of conversion has been well documented (Phelan 1970:6-7).

1528, seven years after the fall of the Aztec metropolis to Hernan Cortés. Twenty years later, in

1547, Olmos finished his Arte para aprender la lengua mexicana. The Arte is the earliest extant

grammar of the Aztec language (then referred to as mexicana, now generally called nahuatl).

Dibble (1974:227) proposed that an understanding of indigenous metaphors was critical to

evangelization. Nahuatl terms for Christian theology could not be invoked until the friars had

achieved a mastery of the metaphoric meaning of the language. Olmos included metaphors in his

grammatical description of Nahuatl as an example of elegant language use. The metaphors

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illustrated literary tropes common to Aztec courtly speech and provided missionaries with

building blocks to communicate Christian theology through indigenous images.

Metáforas and Metaphors

Olmos identifies the eighth chapter of his grammar as "Metáforas," metaphors, which he

defined as "una cosa que quiere dezir la letra y otra la sentencia, aunque algunos vayan a la letra

glosados y otros se pueden aplicar a otro sentido del que van" [one thing is meant literally and

another thing is meant by the sentence, although some [interpretations] follow a literal gloss,

others can be applied to another sense] (Maxwell and Hanson 1992). The understanding of

metaphor expressed here is much like that in common linguistic usage today. "The essence of

metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another"(Lakoff and

Johnson 1980).

Metaphors may be active or inactive, creative or conventionalized. A metaphor is active,

if the signifier comes to mind in the citation of the signified. That is, if in saying "you're a

peach" an actual peach comes to mind, then the metaphor is active. If, instead, you simply

understand that you've been called nice, then the metaphor is no longer active. Some

metaphorical phrases become so banal, so common that they become conventionally,

interchangeable with the signified. As Lakoff says, they "become the other."

The tropes of Nahuatl in Olmos' Arte seem active and vibrant to most of us, since they

require us to visualize and make connections which we do not make habitually or by rote.

However, they too had conventionalized usage of metaphors. A primary vehicle for Nahuatl

metaphor is the couplet. Couplets are paired structures that use the images of the two "halves" to

evoke a third image. Many couplets came to routinely stand for their referents, their signifieds.

A:tl tepe:tl, literally "water hill" became the compound noun a:ltepe:tl 'town'.

Nahuatl tropes of elevated discourse in the metáforas included multi-valency, polar

coupling, and inversion. Inversion denotes the use of a "referring" phrase for its antonym. Thus

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cua:uhtli o:ce:lo:tl, "eagle, ocelot", refers to an elevated caste of eagle and jaguar warriors, but

may be inverted to refer to a commoner. Polar coupling names two exemplar members of a set,

hence, metonymically the set "na:ntli tahtli," "mother father," for ancestors. Multi-valency

denotes ambiguity, both lexical and morphological, the potential to parse a given form into more

than one root plus a series of affixes. Thus tlama:pi:ctli may be read as "carefully select" or

"sleight of hand"; scribal y^youi may be read as i:ohuih "his difficulty" or i:ohhui "his road." Our

focus in this paper is on the trope of multi-valency.

Following the informant-scribe-editor model for the construction of the grammars, we

assume that Olmos elicited these Nahuatl tropes from a native speaker. As elite Nahuatl
discourse valued each of these mechanisms, friars designing pedagogical materials sought to

incorporate these forms. Nahuatl informants also sought to include each of these mechanisms in

their responses but with different intentions and hidden meanings. It was on a different scale,

however, that prehispanic Aztec traditions, complex images were obscured from the friar's eyes.

"Ambiguity of a text may rest on the meaning of a multisemous keyword, an implied

connotation, or the potential of the whole narrative to function on a number of levels, such as

metaphoric or hyperbolic"(Paulson 1990:56, emphasis added). The Nahuatl informants

managed to subvert the discourse of domination by expressing two (or more) voices within the

texts they produced.

Convergence

Spanish headings are provided for each set of metaphors presented. This Spanish title or

introduction is given to, and set off from, the following Nahuatl text. At least in part Olmos tried

to capture Nahuatl metaphor with Spanish metaphor in these headings. Where symbols are

shared or overlap between the two cultures the metaphors are nearly homologous. Where

symbols are not shared, the semantic relation between the Spanish and Nahuatl portions of a text

are unstated, they are only counterpositioned in a unified context. How the Spanish meaning

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relates to the Nahuatl meaning is very often unclear. Please note the following metaphor where

meanings in Spanish and Nahuatl converge.

II

The Spanish text reads:

padre. madre. señor. capitán governador que son o están como. árbol de amparo.

English translation:

father. mother. sir. captain governor as they are as trees of protection.

The Nahuatl text reads:

nantli. tahtli. xopechtli. mamaualli. pochotl. aueuetl. ceualli ecauhyo. ecauillo.

English translation:

mother. father. foundation. covering. silk cotton tree. cypress tree. shadow shade.

shading. he was a cool bower; she was a spindle. (Maxwell and Hanson 1992)

Common elements in the Spanish and Nahuatl are the parents (the signified) and the trees

(the signifiers). The rank/status images of the Spanish are missing from the Nahuatl and the

structural and cooling images are missing from the Spanish. The female symbol of the domestic

realm, the spindle, has no counterpart in the Spanish: "madre" appears only in the coupletted
nouns "padre. madre" within the Spanish lines, the succeeding list of titles are all male. The

Nahuatl images alternate in female and male roles and images. The female image typically

precedes the male in the tropes as in the opening noun citation "nantli, tahtli," though in a

chiasmas this ordering is reversed to close the passage: cool bower and spindle. The Nahuatl

pronouns are unmarked for gender, but the image of female is commonly linked to the spindle.

Another example of convergence of the metaphors in Spanish and Nahautl appears in a passage

on offspring.

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 VIII

The Spanish text reads:

Niño gracioso. nacido. como joya. fundida.

English translation:

gracious child born as a jewel cast.

The Nahuatl text reads:

tlapitzalli. tlamamalli. tlapetlaualli in opitzaloc. yn omamalihuac yn opetlaualoc yn

otlachialtiloc. iuhqui. in teocuitlacozcatl.

English translation:
something blown. something drilled. something polished. it was blown. it was drilled. it

was polished. it was awaited. it was the divine ornament (golden jewel). (Maxwell and

Hanson 1992)

In some instances, the no comparable Spanish trope is provided, but the signified of the

Nahuatl passage are identified. These metaphors are simply labelled. Examples include sections

labelled: "labrador o persona baja." [laborer or lowly person]; "mozo siervo o vasallo de

alguno."[servant or vassal of someone]; esclavo."[slave]. Whereas the Spanish in these instances

is non-metaphorical, the Nahuatl remains multi-valent, as in:

The Spanish text reads:

labrador o persona baja.

English translation:

laborer or lowly person

The Nahuatl text reads:

quauhtli. hocelotl. cuitlipilli. atlapalli quauhqui elimiqui.

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English translation:

eagle. ocelotl. noble excrement(tail). leaf. woodsman tiller of soil.(Maxwell and Hanson

1992)

It is in the realm of the themes dealing with secular issues that the convergence between

Spanish and Nahuatl translations is greatest. Significantly, the divergence between them

increases when the subject matter enters the sacred realm.

Divergence
The Spanish were not unprepared for multivalency and involution of meaning in

recognizably poetic tracts. The Metaphors section of Olmos' manuscript is explicitly designated

as such. But there are times when the Spanish headings and the Nahuatl passages slip out of

synch, not simply in failure to identify parallel images for all the couplets, or even to simply

gloss a section, identifying a primary referent, but in apparent inability to capture (or perceive?)

the depth of the multi-valency available in the Nahuatl text. Lakoff and Johnson note that "the

very systematicity [in metaphors] that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms

of another..... will necessarily hide other easpects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one

aspect of a concept..., a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the
concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor"(1980:9-10).

The Spanish headings which incompletely reference the Nahuatl images hide the un-

"translated" images from the Spanish reader/speaker/grammar user. These headings reinterpreted

in later dictionary entries, such as Siméon's (1983), no longer have access to the unpaired and

"unglossed" Nahuatl couplets. The Spanish headings which do not seek to find homologous or

isomorphic tropes, but simply label the Nahuatl passages lose access to the connotations of the

referenced domain. The features of the signifier that are to be mapped onto the signified are

obliterated in a universal transfer.

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 The first of the Olmos' metaphors provides an example of this divergence in the Spanish

and Nahuatl metaphors. The Spanish heading is metaphoric and that metaphor highlights or

defines an image; it is an invocation of a Spanish diety. The Nahuatl, though arguably on a

similar theme, invokes a different image of the divine, of worship and the paraphrenalia thereof.

Given the Spanish heading as gloss, the nativistic elements are safely obscured, hidden.

The Spanish text reads:

aqui abro y descubro el corazon de parte de dios.

English translation:
here I open and disclose my heart for god.

The Nahuatl text reads:

Nican no contlapoua. intoptli in petlacalli ualcemmani ualchayaui in chalchiuitl. in

teoxiuitl. in pepetzcatiuetzi yn popocatiuetzi yan neuetzi. çan uelneltiz in itechpa uitz yn

iceltzin d.

English translation:

here he reads it aloud, before the idol bundle, before the coffer. He scatters, he sprinkles

the turquoise, the precious stones. They fall shining, they fall smoking. They do not fall

in vain. God is realized there with him, god comes to him alone. (Maxwell and Hanson
1992)

The first two lines of the Nahuatl invoke the divine. The reference is to "god", but

through the metonymic device of the idol bundle and the coffer, native paraphrenalia. The

actions of scattering and sprinkling are ambiguous as to doctrine, but the objects sprinkled are

again familiar to Nahuatl speakers, turquoise and precious stones. The smoke of incense is

compatible with both sets of religious practice. The line stating that the sacrifice is not vain is

unproblematic, nor is the manifestation of god, successfully invoked by the native symbols

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marshalled.

While the Spanish reader, writer, grammar user may utilize the Olmos metaphors, the

readings, meanings, references highlighted by the Spanish headings will be those exploited,

understood, and eventually catalogued in dictionaries. The Nahuatl reader, hearers will have

access to more levels, seeking multiplicity and inversion in both the Spanish and Nahuatl texts.

They will look for opposed meanings both withing each language's text and between them.

Another Spanish heading of a Metaphor states that god sends pestilence and "contrary

times" as a punishment for sin, while the Nahuatl allows that interpretation, but also permits one

to presage earthquake and destruction as a consequence for ceasing to practice traditional

be read as a threat and a promise from both pantheons.

XV

The Spanish text reads:

Por los pecados et inobediencia da dios pestilencia y contrarios tiempos.

English translation:

For sins and disobedience god gives pestilence and contrary times.

The Nahuatl text reads:

in ocelotl yn ahaztli in cuitlapilli ic tepan colini. yn ueitetl yn eui. quauitl. auh yn

ilhuicatl. yc nanatzca. Auh in tlalli. olinih.

English translation:

Up on the high place, the exalted place, he emerges, he stands forth, he kicks over the

mat, the throne of god (dios) the ocelotl, the wings and tail (eagle). Before the multitudes,

the great stones and wood bend, heaven resounds, and the earth quakes.

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 The multivalence of the Nahuatl tropes and the persistence and familiarity with the

aesthetic canon of Nahuatl speakers allowed them to encode and decode messages concealed

within an overtly parsible and occidentally doctrinaire passage. Even though the Spanish were

familiar with the principles of involuted tropes and were themselves beginning to build to the

baroque culmination of the culteranismo style in the works of Góngora, they were not so

pervasive in their reading of multiple/simultaneous levels. Where Olmos highlights the reading

he wishes to perpetuate and to use in the work of conversion, he also obscures still present native

texts, whose interpretations may include (especially through the mechanism of inversion) ideas

culturally and doctrinarily at odds with the "surface" interpretation. The obscured text is still
available to native audiences and provides them a safe voice. Cultural images, symbols, and

values are perpetuated within the vehicle Olmos constructs for the presentation of the "new"

religious order. The images of "stone and wood" of "idol bundle and coffer" are recorded by

Olmos and meant to be used to enjoin worship in new temples, with the "purisimo" and the arks.

A final example is particularly poignant.

XXV

The Spanish text reads:

la doctrina sancta q^ sale del coraço^ a de ser tenida en much y no menos. preciada
English translation:

The holy doctrine that leaves from the heart is to be esteemed and not despised.

The Nahuatl text reads:

yntoptli. ympetlacalli. amo ytech axiuani. amotzitz quiloni amo analoni. amotlaca auilli.

yehica. yn teyollotlan ym meya yn quiça yn qualli. uehueyotl. hatlatlaçaloni.

English translation:

The bundle, the woven structure, it cannot be obtained, cannot be grasped, cannot be

seized. It is not a toy. Its power wells up, it emerges from inner places. Such virture, such

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 ancientness is not to be thrown aside. (Maxwell and Hanson 1992)

Here the divergence is complete. Both Spanish and Nahuatl tropes are referencing the

potency of sacred doctrine. The Spanish focuses on the Christian virtues embodied in saints. The

Nahuatl images are again of prehispanic religious paraphenalia accompanied by a warning: the

powers invoked by these objects are not toys, and they are not to be cast aside.

Conclusion

The Spanish headings in Olmos hide the Nahuatl world from the Spanish, rather than
explicate it. The metaphors they read are familiar to them, for they are their own. Even in

Spanish perusal of untitled, or unglossed sections, the Spanish eye will read the congruent

metaphors, those highlighted by their own cultural constructs. The metaphors the Nahuatl read

are also their own, with the Spanish available for inversion, bracketing and dynamic tension.

The Nahuatl asthetic requires a constant potential for multiple interpretations, which are not to be

vying, but simultaneously valid. The Spanish headings, if included with the Nahuatl text, for

Nahuatl interpretation, simply add another level of polyvalency. The relationship between the

Spanish headings/interpretation and the Native text can be seen as symbiotic; they provide

protective coloration and enhance the survival of the native tropes and the reality they encode. In
the metaphors of Fray Andrés de Olmos' Arte, Nahuatl exegeses of Spanish texts promote the

native epistemology under the guise of exemplifying evangelical oratory. This text may be the

earliest example of the use of ambiguous discourse as a strategy for survival in the early modern

world.

Bibliography
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Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson
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Maxwell, Judith M. and Craig A. Hanson

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