El envoltorio sagrado en la plástica y el ritual

Abstract

The depth and complexity of Mesoamerican religious beliefs and practices provoke amazement and perplexity. Mesoamerican man manifested in various ways a close relationship with the field of the sacred, among them was the veneration of the stone and wooden images of his gods, but a special cult was also paid to the tlaquimilolli, a type of sacred bundle that contained relics and objects linked to specific divinities.

The tlaquimilolli occupy a prominent place in Mesoamerican religion because they were a privileged means of communication with the gods, and a symbol of identity intimately linked to the foundational events that gave rise to numerous lordships or altepeme, as well as the emergence of family lineages or dynasties. The Olmec archaeological site of El Manati reveals that the tlaquimilolli emerged in the Preclassic; moreover, they persisted in certain regions of Mesoamerica years after the fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan, as evidenced by the Inquisitorial Process of Yanhuitlan (Oaxaca).

In Mesoamerica, the cult of ancestors was especially expressed in the veneration of sacred wrappings, which were very important as a means of legitimizing their rulers. In the Mixtec region, the cult of the sacred bulk was the main religious manifestation; here two types of ritual bundles are distinguished: the communal ones guarded inside the temples, which contain relics, sacred and symbolic objects linked to the gods, and the wrappings belonging to a specific family or lineage, preserved in the houses or palaces of their owners, and which generally received a private cult.

The domestic baskets testify to the persistence of pre-Cortesian religious beliefs and practices in the Hispanic era, they are linked to the sacred wrappings because their heterogeneous set of objects includes the tlapialli, the effigies of the protective gods of the lineage, responsible for the well-being of the family. It is surprising to see that, until a few years ago, in the brotherhoods of the Tz'utujil population of Santiago Atitlan, the veneration of ritual bundles or wrappings persisted. In Maya plastic art we can verify the presence of ritual bundles on the lintels of Yaxchilan, commissioned by the Yaxuun B'alam IV (Jaguar Bird IV) sovereign, and on polychrome vessels for cocoa drinks, from the kingdoms of Nakbe and Naranjo.