Papers by Alessandro Lupo
Alfredo López Austin (1936-2021): uno sguardo dall'Italia, 2023
This article briefly outlines the life and work of the great Mexican historian Alfredo López Aust... more This article briefly outlines the life and work of the great Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin, highlighting the main research themes he addressed, his highly original contribution to studies of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilizations, their worldview, mythology, and religion, and the transformations they underwent in the centuries following the Conquest. In the second part it focuses in particular on his intense relationships with Italian scholars, with whom he had an intense dialogue.
Sostanze, attori e sensi: la temporalità della percezione nel corso dei rituali nahua, 2019
This article examines the sensory dimension of the objects, words and actions used in ritual prac... more This article examines the sensory dimension of the objects, words and actions used in ritual practices by the Nahua of the Sierra Norte of Puebla (Mexico), whose properties change through the different phases and according to the characters – both human and extra-human – who are believed to be present on the ritual scene. Based on some ethnographic examples concerning the ritual therapy of ailments affecting the emotional sphere and the human souls, as well as the offerings given to the dead on the occasion of their celebration in early November, I suggest that the different perceptive faculties of the subjects and recipients of Nahua ritual clearly emerge from the temporal succession of the acts performed, in which the senses determine a variety of ways for appropriating and using the goods and essences that circulate during ritual acts.
La decapitazione del serpente: vitalità e plasticità di un motivo mitologico nelle pratiche coreutico-rituali degli Ikoots (Huave) di Oaxaca (Messico), 2023
The theme of the cosmic struggle between a mythical chthonic serpent and lightning, in which the ... more The theme of the cosmic struggle between a mythical chthonic serpent and lightning, in which the former threatens to devastate human settlements with floods and the latter intervenes to restore order by decapitating the reptile, has been attested since pre-Hispanic times in the iconography of the native peoples of the Mexican state of Oaxaca and also appears in several early colonial codices. During the process of evangelization it merged with one of the Iberian liturgical representations of the triumph of Good over the forces of Evil, personified by the figure of Tarasca, a kind of papier-mâché dragon who is one of the main characters of the Corpus Christi feast. In the Ikoots community of San Mateo del Mar this is the main religious celebration of the liturgical year, coinciding with the delicate transition between the dry and wet season, when rains fill the lagoons, allowing the resumption of shrimp fishing, the community's main source of livelihood. The entire Corpus feast has as its centerpiece the performance of the “snake dance,” in which a dancer who embodies lightning symbolically beheads his antagonist, who bears a snake head tied to his back. The native population attributes exemplary value to the motif of the lightning-snake struggle and persists in scenically representing the concern for the meteorological order on which the precarious survival of the community is based: this is confirmed by the fact that teachers of the local bilingual schools recently involved their schoolchildren as actors in producing a short didactic film based precisely on this narrative.
“Yolyemani huan nalhuayotia o Ablandar el corazón y poner raíces”. Palabras rituales nahuas para asegurar el cariño de una mujer, 2023
This essay offers some thoughts on the way in which love and the matrimonial roles and relations ... more This essay offers some thoughts on the way in which love and the matrimonial roles and relations between man and woman are conceived and represented among the Nahua in the township of Cuetzalan del Progreso (in the Sierra Norte de Puebla), based essentially on the examination of prayers that ritual specialists use to secure the help of extra-human figures in order to ensure the affection, consent, and fidelity of a woman for a male client. The formulas, analogies, and metaphors employed, as well as the beings invoked and the actions requested from them help us grasp the distinctive features of Nahua thought on the nature of the man-woman relationship, the purposes it may have, and the principles and rules of conduct that govern it. Although deeply imbued with values and expressions inspired by Catholicism, these words reveal the persistence of some axiological models deeply rooted in the imaginary of the Nahua population and its close relation to agricultural activity and the interdependence with the natural environment in which human beings spend their existence.
Sapienza’s ethnological investigations in Mexico: from observation to cooperation and restitution, 2021
The article presents the most recent research developments of the Italian Ethnological Mission in... more The article presents the most recent research developments of the Italian Ethnological Mission in Mexico, which covered a wide thematic spectrum and increased the restitution to indigenous populations of ethnographic materials collected over the last 45 years. It highlights the relevance of issues such as medical anthropology and health management, and the new forms and uses of the indigenous material and intangible cultural heritage, such as oral traditions, music and dance.
in Eduardo Matos Moctezuma - Angela Ochoa (coords.), Del saber ha hecho su razón de ser... Homenaje a Alfredo López Austin, vol. 2, pp. 263-286. Secretaría de Cultura – Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas
B.Moncó - E. Gómez Pellón (eds.), "Creatividad y futuro: horizontes antropológicos. Homenaje a Ricardo Sanmartín. Manresa: Bellaterra, 2021
The article examines the topic of "conversion" from an anthropological perspective within a speci... more The article examines the topic of "conversion" from an anthropological perspective within a specific context: that of indigenous Mexico, where some members of the Catholic clergy adhering to the theological-pastoral current of the so-called Indian Theology declare that they have been to some extent "converted" by the own indigenous parishioners. In other words - in the light of the new perspective of the “inculturation” of the Gospel that emerged from the Second Vatican Council - the fact that they intimately shared the native forms of traditional religiosity, still strongly linked to the pre-colonial heritage, led them to radically rethink their identity as priests and evangelizers, recognizing in the religious forms practiced by native communities the presence of truths of faith, values and models of conduct that are decidedly preferable to the exogenous ones that the clergy had tried to impose up to a few years ago.
Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 63, 2022
The article examines the conceptions and practices concerning dreams of the Nahuas of pre-Hispani... more The article examines the conceptions and practices concerning dreams of the Nahuas of pre-Hispanic and contemporary Mexico. For the pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, the study is based on the historical testimonies of chroniclers and evangelizers, as well as the linguistic repertoires and Nahuatl texts written during the early colonial period. As for the contemporary Nahuas, the author presents and analyses the ethnographic data he has collected in the municipality of Cuetzalan (Puebla), highlighting the relationship between the different spiritual components and the dream activity, the role of dreams in the professional "call" of ritual specialists, their ability to exercise an active control on dreaming, as well as the threats that dreams can imply for the integrity of the person. For the Nahuas, dreaming constitutes a domain in which the boundary between the human and extra-human world becomes porous and which allows access to forms of knowledge and agency that are precluded in the waking state. Finally, dreaming is a highly socialized experience, in which traditional models provide cognitive and operational tools with which to confer meaning to critical existential experiences and identify responses that often prove effective.
Lupo Un nuovo suono per antiche ossa: la valorizzazione del patrimonio etno-archeologico nella museografia del XXI secolo, 2020
The text illustrates the interdisciplinary perspective and the contents of Valeria Bellomia's boo... more The text illustrates the interdisciplinary perspective and the contents of Valeria Bellomia's book "Listening to a human bone", which exposes the results of an unpublished investigation carried out on a peculiar musical instrument of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, obtained from human bones of sacrificial prisoners and used on specific ritual occasions. The investigation involved several museums, in Italy and Mexico, the use of innovative technologies (such as the creation of 3D replicas) and the design of renewed museum installations, more sensitive to the interlocution with the descendants of the Amerindian peoples which produced the artifacts, and more attentive to the possibility of a multisensory fruition of the objects preserved in museums.
Lupo L’etnologia messicana di Italo Signorini tra ricerca sul campo e insegnamento, 2020
After founding the Italian Ethnological Mission in Mexico in 1973, which he directed for over 20 ... more After founding the Italian Ethnological Mission in Mexico in 1973, which he directed for over 20 years, Italo Signorini carried out his ethnographic research among Mexican natives, studying in depth the results of the evangelization process which started with the Conquest, the syncretic dynamics and the peculiar forms of Catholic native religion, as well as the negotiations carried out by the representatives of the clergy and the native ritual specialists. His characteristically balanced approach to the study of the Catholic Church’s pastoral work enabled him to propose penetrating and innovative analyses on the categories and interpretations of scholars who had tackled the same themes from positions characterized by a strong ideological opposition, and he was able to provide original and well argued interpretations about indigenous religiosity. His long lasting experience in Mexico was of great help in the decade in which he covered teaching assignments at the Pontifical Urbaniana University (1984-1993), allowing him to adapt the teaching of ethnology to this peculiar educational context and to the needs of a missiology clearly oriented towards the enculturation of the Gospel.
Dal sincretismo all’inculturazione, 2020
Starting from the ethnographic observation of what the followers of the current called Teología I... more Starting from the ethnographic observation of what the followers of the current called Teología India (Indigenous Theology) perform in numerous native areas of Mexico, this article examines the transformation of the way in which a significant part of the Catholic clergy conceives and carries out their pastoral endeavor in native communities converted in more or less recent times. Following the doctrinal reorientation that emerged from the Second Vatican Council, the “exclusive” approach of the Church - which according to some scholars would preclude Christianity from opening towards cultural otherness - has given way to an innovative and clearly “inclusive” approach: on these new theological bases, traditions, symbols, cultic practices, values and even figures from the extra-human pre-Christian world are radically reinterpreted and can find acceptance.
Adriana Romaldo (ed.), A Maurizio Bettini. Pagine stravaganti per un filologo stravagante, pp. 219-222. Milano-Udine: Mimesis Edizioni. ISBN: 9788857544960, 2017
In its planetary diffusion, the episode of Odysseus meeting Polyphemus has also arrived among the... more In its planetary diffusion, the episode of Odysseus meeting Polyphemus has also arrived among the Huave, a group of native of fishermen in southern Mexico, who have welcomed it in their rich oral tradition, adapting it to their mythological horizon. So the hero from Ithaca has become a poor fisherman, the anthropophagous appetite of the cyclope is stimulated by the pleasant taste of the flesh of men who eat fish and shrimp, the rocks thrown against the fugitives become coconuts. But, above all, the barbarous alterity of the one-eyed monsters is enriched by the presence of a series of female cyclopes, for whom the appetite that drives their husbands to devour the prisoners is declined in sexual terms, with the exotic peculiarity of an anomalous shape of their genitals.
L'Uomo, 2019
This note outlines the profile of this eminent Mexican scholar, historian, and linguist, the grea... more This note outlines the profile of this eminent Mexican scholar, historian, and linguist, the greatest expert of the literary production of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples who dominated Mexico’s Central Plateau at the time of the Spanish Conquest, at the beginning of the 16th century. I highlight the innovative contribution León-Portilla gave to the attitude of scholars towards Amerindian civilizations and to the cultural and political processes that have contributed to giving dignity and political autonomy to their descendants.
Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl , 2019
On the base of ethnographic data collected among the Nahua of the Northern Sierra of Puebla, I tr... more On the base of ethnographic data collected among the Nahua of the Northern Sierra of Puebla, I try to understand the logic that inspires the composition, form and quantity of the offerings and the content of the ritual words addressed to the deceased in Todos los Santos: the mortuary symbolism of the kinds of food arranged on the altars reveals its latent anthropophagical meaning and demonstrates that the entire celebration is essentially structured according to the principle of reciprocity, and aims to satisfying the appetites of the deceased, in order to prevent them from diverting their hunger towards the living. The temporal sequence according to which the various ritual agents eat the food offerings brings to light the various ways in which the living and the dead eat each other’s representations.
Arqueología Mexicana, 1999
The article examines an aspect of the conceptions of personhood, found since very early times in ... more The article examines an aspect of the conceptions of personhood, found since very early times in Mesoamerica. First of all, the idea that human beings are all endowed with one or more alter egos, mostly animals (but also natural phenomena, such as lightning, wind, etc.), that the species of the "double" determines the character and physical and spiritual resistance of the individual, and that the destinies of the two counterparts are closely interconnected, in a relationship that some scholars have called "co-essence". Secondly, the idea that some individuals (sometimes due to the particular nature of their alter ego) can abandon their human features and turn into animals or other beings, in order to perform prodigious acts. These two conceptions, present with many variations among native Mesoamerican peoples, have often been labeled as "tonalism" (from the Nahuatl "tonalli", which originally referred to the calendrical day-sign) and "nahualism” or “nagualism” (from the Nahuatl “nahualli”, which designated a transforming-witch).
Dalle sette caverne alla sala parto: un excursus su concezioni e pratiche intorno all’utero nel Messico antico e moderno, 2018
In the pre-Hispanic world, the civilizations that arose in the present Mexican territory elaborat... more In the pre-Hispanic world, the civilizations that arose in the present Mexican territory elaborated a rich symbolism about the uterus and its functions, of which they have left a rich iconographic, mythological and historical evidence. The very place of origin of the Nahua people (mainly known to us as Aztecs) who imposed their hegemony over central Mexico is often imagined as a sort of chtonic uterus subdivided into several lobes (called Chicomoztoc ‘seven caves’), each of which gave birth to one of the Nahuatl speaking tribes. An explicit uterine symbolism also inspired the use of the steam bath, still used today in conjunction with childbirth and the cure of various diseases, under the patronage of deities related to procreation. Especially interesting are the ideas around reproductive physiology, present in countless contemporary indigenous communities, as well as the practices related to reproductive health, which continue to be the prerogative of a large number of traditional midwives: it is precisely on the manipulation and positioning of the uterus during pregnancy and after childbirth that native midwives have built their own specific field of action, alternative to the heavy medicalization implemented within the health structures, as well as useful to affirm the dignity and autonomy of native knowledge.
Il diluvio azteco, l’evangelizzazione e la persistenza dei modelli narrativi nelle società indigene messicane, 2017
The article proposes a reflection on a mythological theme found by the early evangelizers of the ... more The article proposes a reflection on a mythological theme found by the early evangelizers of the American people in the pre-Hispanic Nahua tradition, in which the first survivors of a flood in some respects similar to that of the Bible, offend the gods and are transformed into dogs, which in turn give origin to some of the peoples of Mesoamerica. A narrative motif that, blended with the arch-testamentary version of the ark, persists in the oral narrative of many indigenous groups in contemporary Mexico. By comparing and analyzing the early versions of the Aztec tale of the flood and those recently collected in an indigenous community in Oaxaca, the article offers some considerations about the reasons for the persistence of some narrative elements and the criteria that have inspired their re-elaboration and adaptation into the current version of the Huave flood story.
After some brief considerations about the use of the category of shamanism in the Mesoamerican co... more After some brief considerations about the use of the category of shamanism in the Mesoamerican context, the article deals with the conceptions and practices related to the evils that the Huave of San Mateo del Mar – a Native people of fishermen living on the coast of Oaxaca - attribute to the misadventures that can affect people’s alter ego. Initially, the article illustrates the concepts concerning the spiritual endowment of the person, which is believed to be made up of an internal soul component and an external "double", who leads a life parallel to the subject and whose adventures affect the human counterpart, sometimes causing serious and sudden illnesses. The cure of such ailments requires a particular type of ritual intervention, in which a specialist with a specially powerful alter ego sends it under his own control where the patient's “double” is located, in order to free him from the dangers that threaten it. This dangerous ritual practice consists of the theatrical execution in the patient's home of the acts that the healer’s "double" performs there where the wounded alter ego lies. In the end, after highlighting the analogies of these ritual actions with the "classical" shamanic therapies (including the Kuna ones examined by Lévi-Strauss in a famous essay), some conclusive considerations are formulated about the mechanisms of the possible therapeutic efficacy of symbolic acts.
This is an introduction to the proceedings of the conference organized in Mexico City in August 2... more This is an introduction to the proceedings of the conference organized in Mexico City in August 2015 to commemorate Italo Signorini, ethnologist, founder and first director of the Italian Ethnological Mission in Mexico. It contains a profile of the Italian scholar and a sketch of the contents of the different essays contained in the volume entitled "La cultura plural. Reflexiones sobre diálogo y silencios en Mesoamérica".
Obituary of Italo Signorini, ethnologist, founder and director of the Italian Ethnological Missio... more Obituary of Italo Signorini, ethnologist, founder and director of the Italian Ethnological Mission in Mexico
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Papers by Alessandro Lupo