Issue of Sacrifice

[maestas at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

Neither prehistoric archaeology nor historical ethnographic material are
reliable even in the best of cases and are usually made up of narratives
that are based more on assumptions of what we do not know rather than what
we do know.  In any case, there is not one archaeological or historical
ethnographical piece of material that is not under contention because of
the necessarily interpretive process that must go into it to make sense of
it, while at the same time making a mess of it.  Basically, my point is
that the scientific humanities of archaeology, anthropology and history
need to be recognized as the interpretive attempts that they are and not
as reliable sources of truth.  It surprises me how "matter of fact"
rhetoric spews forth when it should always be qualified by "according to
an interpretation".  For example, your interpretation of sacrifice may
mean to make something sacred but you have yet to explain what it means to
make something sacred and how the drastic and dramatic act of taking life
can be anything less than sacred for any human being who has not
desensitized and dehumanized themselves to the value of human life.

To provide a contrast, it is useful to bring human sacrifice back home and
consider the place that ritual death has become relatively commonplace in
the US through serial murder, terrorism and mass suicide.  How many of
us think of these activities as human sacrifice as they go one in or
around most urban centers in the US?  Maybe some of us can feel better
about them if we do not sloganize them and sensationalize them as brutal
cases of human sacrifice and instead think about them as isolated
and unrelated incidents.  However, if we apply the analytic of human
sacrifice as sacred killing practices according to a less than fully
understood belief system, anything from the Oklahoma City bombing to
adolescent vampirism can be seen as human sacrifice.  The important
point here is that we do not understand human sacrifice either in the
Valley of Mexico 1500 or in the US 2000 well enough to sloganize it.

On a more personal note, I reacted to the statements of human sacrifice
because they emotionally concern me as a Chicano who has been insulted and
affronted by the scholastic treatment of ritual death in the Valley
of Mexico as sensationalized Aztec human sacrifice. I want to make you
aware that you cause pain each time you refer to Aztec human sacrifice as
something to refer to matter of factly.  When the Aztec Exhibit came to
Denver, Colorado it portrayed the heritage of Mexican people as
bloodthirsty and brutal, which created an environment in  which I and many
Chicanos and Mexicanos were asked "Did your ancestors really do that?"
Such exhibits and the consequent attitudes that I still hear every so
often are reckless and hurtful and not productive to intelligent
discussion so I ask you to please stop while at the same time
apologizing for inciteful comments that I have made in reaction to them.
I think that instead of sloganizing and sensationalizing human sacrifice
as has been done through the Aztec Exhibit we can look at other ways in
which killing and ritual killing makes sense or not to us as part of our
world and take that complexity in order to respect the likelihood that we
can never understand the role that it played for the people in the Valley
of Mexico.

On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> >
> > Note also that European war practices before the present century generally
> > did not target civilians (during the actual battles).  Noncombatants were
> > eliminated (if they were) by other means (displacement, starvation,
> > terrorism, and so forth).  The Spaniards did not *directly* kill all tha
> > many Nahua, and most of those were warriors.  Disease and societal
> > collapse did the bulk of the work of native depopulation.
>
> Plus, there is both prehistoric archaeological and reliable historical
> ethnographic material showing that at least in North American the killing
> of women and children was one way of warring.  So much of the
> current discussion about this sort of thing reminds me too much of the
> Japanese attempts to hide the facts of their World War II atrocities from
> the modern generation.  Humans are humans.  Sheesh happens.
>
>
>
>
> Michael McCafferty
> C.E.L.T.
> 307 Memorial Hall
> Indiana University
> Bloomington, Indiana
> 47405
> mmccaffe at indiana.edu
>
> *******************************************************************************
> "Glory" (what a word!) consists in going
> from the me that others don't know
> to the other me that I don't know.
>
> -Juan Ramon Jimenez
>
> *******************************************************************************
>
>
>