dark/light skin color differences in pre- and post-conquest Mexico

[Rudiger V. Busto]

I don't have the text at hand, but following Caroline's note, Diaz notes 
that when Cortes orders the destruction of the idols at Cempoala (Veracruz) 
and the conversion of the Cempoalans, he cuts the long hair (matted?) of 
the priests and then forces them to wear white tunics instead of their 
apparently black ones.  As a tribute paying people to the Mexica, perhaps 
the Cempoalans adopted/were forced to "blacken" their priests == here by 
use of a tunic.  Or, of course, maybe "black" priests are a mesoamerican 
convention?

Rudy Busto
Religious Studies
UC-Santa Barbara

--On Friday, April 25, 2008 7:18 PM +0100 "Dodds, Dr C.E." 
<ced22 at leicester.ac.uk> wrote:

> Further to Kier's email, Diaz also talks about the hair being matted. He
> says 'Their hair was very long and so tangled that it could not have been
> parted unless they had cut it first. Moreover, it was all clotted with
> the blood which oozed from their ears, for they had offered them as a
> sacrifice that day.' (p.173 in the Penguin edition) I have never seen any
> mention of the black of the priests being related to blood on the skin,
> however. And if I remember rightly there are a number of mentions of them
> specifically being 'painted' black. (With soot I think?) It is true that
> blood goes blackish when dry and as the priests didn't wash then it's not
> impossible. I don't remember ever having seen a reference to this,
> however.
>
> Caroline
> --------------
> Dr. Caroline Dodds
> Lecturer in Early Modern History
> School of Historical Studies
> University of Leicester
> University Road
> Leicester
> LE1 7RH
>
> email: ced22 at le.ac.uk
> http://www.le.ac.uk/history/people/ced22.html
>
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Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor
Asian / Pacific American & Chican@/Latin@ Religions
Religious Studies Department
The University of California, Santa Barbara
Humanities and Social Sciences Building 3038
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3130
http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/busto.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus
I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves...."
	--- Billy Collins, "Books" (1988)


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