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The Mexican Legacy in Nicaragua, or Problemswhen Data Behave Badly

Geoffrey McCaffertyUniversity of Calgary

ABSTRACTInvestigations over the past 15 years have sought archaeological evidence for Mexican migrants to Pacific

Nicaragua, as indicated in ethnohistorical origin myths and as embraced by contemporary popular culture. Extensiveexcavations at three Postclassic sites have provided evidence of domestic architecture, foodways, mortuary remains,and religious practices—all considered to be potential archaeological indicators of ethnicity, but none of whichprovide strong evidence of Mexican identity. A larger theme is the contemporary reaction to challenging the identityof the indigenous ancestors. This paper discusses the Mexican legacy in Nicaragua, and strategies for negotiatingpopular ideology with badly behaved archaeological data. [Nicaragua, migration, ethnic identity, heritage politics,political identity]

I nvestigations over the past 15 years have searched forarchaeological evidence for Mexican migrants to lower

Central America, as indicated in ethnohistorical originmyths and as embraced by contemporary popular culture.For example, Nicaragua itself is named after the chief ofthe Nahuat-speaking Nicarao who the Spanish first encoun-tered in 1522. Nahuat- and Oto-Manguean speakers werethe major indigenous groups in Pacific Nicaragua at contact(Abel-Vidor 1981; Chapman 1960; Ibarra Rojas 2001), andalthough they were largely exterminated during the Colonialperiod they are still the groups most associated with the Pre-Hispanic past (Newson 1987). Problems arise in the verynon-Mesoamerican lifeways of Postclassic (C.E. 900–1550)inhabitants along the shore of Lake Cocibolca (also knownas Lake Nicaragua), supposedly the “Mexican heartland” atthe time of European contact, as demonstrated through in-tensive excavations of three Postclassic sites supposedly re-lating to these migrant groups (McCafferty 2008a, 2010a).Extensive analyses have evaluated domestic architecture,foodways, mortuary remains, and religious practices—allconsidered to be potential archaeological indicators of eth-nicity, but none of which provide strong evidence of Mexican

identity. A larger theme relevant to this volume is the reac-tion to challenging the identity of the indigenous ancestors,which is perceived by Nicaraguan scholars as a blow againstentrenched concepts of ethnic origin and political identity.This paper will discuss the Mexican legacy in Nicaragua,and strategies for negotiating popular ideology with badlybehaved archaeological data.

Historical Context

Imagine the surprise and wonder of conquistador GilGonzalez as he entered the indigenous town of Quauh-capolca in 1522 (Figure 12.1). A “garden city” of thousandsof inhabitants stretching for miles along the shore of an in-land sea now known as Lake Cocibolca, Quauhcapolca wasthe capital of king Nicaragua’s territory, and home to a peo-ple known as the Nicarao. Added to that was the discoverythat the native group spoke a dialect of Nahuat closely affili-ated with the language spoken by the Aztecs of central Mex-ico. Nahuat was a lingua franca of Postclassic Mesoamerica,spoken by the long-distance merchants from ports-of-trade

ARCHEOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, Vol. 25, pp. 110–118, ISSN 1551-823X,online ISSN 1551-8248. C© 2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/apaa.12053.

The Mexican Legacy in Nicaragua 111

Figure 12.1. Mural in Rivas, Nicaragua, depicting arrival of Gil Gonzalez in Quauhcapolca (photo by author).

such as Cholula in the Mexican highlands and Xicalango onthe Gulf Coast (Berdan 1978; Chapman 1957).

Following in the footsteps of Gonzalez were otherSpaniards seeking gold, glory, and souls, as had been wonby contemporary conquistadores such as Hernan Cortes andFrancisco Pizarro. Chroniclers of these incursions, espe-cially Gonzalo Oviedo y Valdes (1976; see also Abel-Vidor1980), recorded the cultural attributes of the natives of Pa-cific Nicaragua, including a calendar system identical tothat of the Nahuas of central Mexico, a similar religiouspantheon, the use of human sacrifice and screenfold pic-torial manuscripts (Leon-Portilla 1972), and the economicimportance of cacao (Steinbrenner 2006).

The chroniclers also noted the “mythstorical” origins ofthe group, who claimed to have fled south “7 or 8 ages ofan old man” prior, leaving Cholula to escape the “tyranny”of the Olmeca Xicallanca (Torquemada 1975–83, Volume1:353–354). While frustratingly vague, this date has beeninterpreted at C.E. 800–900 based on the “age of an oldman” being two Mesoamerican calendar rounds of 52 yearsprior to Torquemada’s publication date in the early 1600s.This migration myth links the Nicarao with other refugeegroups along the Pacific coast of Central America, such as

the Pipil of El Salvador (Fowler 1989). Note, however, thepossibility that if an “old man’s” age was only one calendarround of 52 years, then the “mythstorical” date would beabout C.E. 1200–1250, and would thereby correspond toanother archaeologically defined transition.

This “Out of Mexico” origin myth is a pervasive legacyof modern Nicaragua—taught in schools from the earliestgrades, reified through Nahuatl toponyms on the modernlandscape, and replicated through popular naming elementssuch as the Taquerıa Azteca. Historically, Nahuatl was spo-ken by traditional groups into the last century (Field 1998;Newson 1987), and members of small communities suchas Veracruz de Zapotal still identify themselves as ethnicNahua (De Burgos 2006).

Archaeological Context

Art historians of the 20th century were intrigued by thevivid polychrome pottery of the Postclassic period, findingclose parallels with the Mixteca-Puebla stylistic traditioncentered at Cholula (Day 1994; Lothrop 1926; McCaffertyand Steinbrenner 2005a). Consequently, there was little

112 Geoffrey McCafferty

reason to question the pervasive belief in a MexicanizedNicaragua (Coe 1962; Healy 1988; but see Lange 1992–93),and it seemed like an ideal test case for considering anarchaeology of Nahua ethnicity—which is what drew meto lower Central America after 20+ years of archaeologicalresearch in Cholula.

So imagine my surprise when, upon excavating at thepurported Nicarao capital of Quauhcapolca, I found little tosuggest Nahua ethnicity! Beginning in 2000, my team fromthe University of Calgary, with close collaboration from ar-chaeologists from the National Autonomous University ofNicaragua and the University of Costa Rica, spent four fieldseasons excavating at Santa Isabel, the major Postclassiccenter along the shore of Lake Cocibolca that has tradi-tionally been associated with Quauhcapolca (Healy 1980;McCafferty 2008a; McCafferty et al. 2006). We excavatedat five mounds, as well as conducting intensive shovel test

survey of about 5% of the 300 hectare site (Figure 12.2).The low mounds appear to have been residential in nature,lacking stone or even adobe masonry in favor of wattle anddaub. Most floors were of simple packed earth, though somethin plaster was detected at Mound 3.

Preservation of organic materials was exceptional, par-ticularly for a tropical climate, and we recovered an abun-dance of faunal and carbonized botanical remains. This wasimportant since foodways are considered one of the mostresilient characteristics of archaeological ethnicity (Twiss2012; Wing 1981). Numerous infant burials were found inand around the domestic contexts, where they had been in-terred in ovoid-shaped “shoe” pots (McCafferty and Mc-Cafferty 2012a). An adult male and two adolescents wereburied directly in the earthen mounds.

Polychrome ceramics confirmed the Postclassic oc-cupation of the site, but seventeen radiocarbon dates

Figure 12.2. Map of excavated loci at Santa Isabel. Map courtesy of Larry L. Steinbrenner.

The Mexican Legacy in Nicaragua 113

Figure 12.3. Mound 1 excavations at Tepetate (photo by author).

contradicted the Late Postclassic/Contact period dating andinstead ranged from C.E. 900 to 1250 (McCafferty 2008a;McCafferty and Steinbrenner 2005b). This date range re-lates to the local Sapoa period, traditionally associated withthe Oto-Manguean speaking Chorotega group that migratedfrom southern Mexico but supposedly arrived some cen-turies before the Nicarao.

Disappointed that we had not found the Nicaraodescribed in Colonial documents, I obtained a second gen-erous grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-search Council of Canada to move up the coast to the site ofTepetate, the current name for the Contact-period Chorotegacapital of Xalteva, on the outskirts of the Colonial city ofGranada. Granada has been “spreading its skirts” in re-cent years, and Tepetate has almost been completely cov-ered by modern development. It has also been a favoritehunting ground for looters, and the contextual integrity ofthe last remaining mound was severely impacted. In 2008we were able to reach an undisturbed floor in Mound 1(Figure 12.3) and also excavate two poorly preserved burialclusters. An extraordinarily high soil acidity destroyed or-ganic remains, even eliminating most of the polychromedecoration on the pottery, and therefore the results were notparticularly comparable with those of Santa Isabel. Two ra-diocarbon dates again indicated Early Postclassic, Sapoa pe-riod occupation—again we had missed the Contact period!

So we moved again, to the well-protected site of ElRayo on the Asese Peninsula that extends into Lake Coci-bolca. Our excavations began at an area where a recent roadcut had intersected a Pre-Hispanic cemetery featuring moreof the Sacasa Striated shoe-pots. Expanding our investiga-tions to other parts of the site, we also explored a residential

area occupied from the Late Classic Bagaces period (C.E.500–800) through the Sapoa, and a Sapoa period ceremo-nial burial precinct (Figure 12.4). El Rayo again providedexceptional preservation, and therefore a nice comparisonwith Santa Isabel. It was probably a secondary center of theXalteva polity, but may have also had a specialized funer-ary function since some of the richest burials ever found(scientifically) in Nicaragua come from this small fishingcommunity.

One surprising development was that the shoe-pots heldminiature vessels and concentrations of fist-sized basalt cob-bles, but human skeletal remains were rare. Isolated humanskulls were occasionally found beside the urns and wereoccasionally associated with large red-chert knives simi-lar to those depicted at sites such as Chichen Itza and ElTajın in decapitation rituals (McCafferty and McCafferty2012b). Eight radiocarbon dates indicated continuous occu-pation spanning the late Bagaces period until abandonmentat the end of the Sapoa period, thus offering unprecedentedability to interpret the cultural transition associated with thearrival of foreign groups (McCafferty and Dennett 2013).But again, the site appears to have been abandoned beforethe arrival of the final wave of Nahua Nicarao of the LatePostclassic period.

Discussion

As the result of more than 15 years of research in Pa-cific Nicaragua, searching for Mexican migrants in order toevaluate processes of ethnogenesis, we have learned a lotabout the Early Postclassic occupants (McCafferty 2010a,2011; McCafferty and Dennett 2013). For example, we now

114 Geoffrey McCafferty

Figure 12.4. Burial complex at Locus 3, El Rayo (photo by author).

know that they subsisted largely on wild foods from therich local ecology: fish, deer, armadillo, and turtle, supple-mented with native fruits such as jocote. We have not foundevidence of domesticates typical of greater Mesoamerica,such as maize, turkey, or dog. The Chorotega lived in sim-ple houses of wattle and daub. Whereas the sites are fairlyextensive we have found no evidence of monumental archi-tecture or site planning. The rich material culture includesa tremendous variety of artifact classes that provide an ex-ceptional window on past lifeways suitable for a wide rangeof cultural inferences.

But almost none of it corresponds to expectations for aMexican material culture. With its distinctive foodways, lackof monumental architecture, different burial patterns, re-gionally specific figurine styles, Pacific Nicaraguan materialculture is well-developed and clearly non-Mesoamerican.The complete lack of comales, the distinctive ceramic grid-dle used for heating tortillas, was one of the first things thatI noticed, in contrast to about 20 percent comal fragmentsfrom contemporary Cholula domestic contexts (McCafferty2001). Another red flag in the Nicaraguan assemblage isthe lack of incense burners, again in contrast to expecta-tions. Something was significantly wrong with the “Out ofMexico” hypothesis!

There are, however, some material attributes that are re-markably similar to Mexican expectations. Some of the poly-chrome pottery is nearly identical to Gulf Coast and Cholula

styles—a piece that I saw shortly after starting my work inNicaragua could have easily been slipped onto a work ta-ble in Puebla and no one would have noticed. Iconographicelements relate to the Mixteca-Puebla religious pantheon,including feathered serpents, the Tlaloc storm god, and Eh-ecatl aspect of the Quetzalcoatl complex (Figure 12.5). Sim-ilarities, no doubt, but merely window dressing comparedto more substantial evidence of past behavior such as food-ways, architecture and site planning, and mortuary practices.

The conclusion from all this is that a dramatic pop-ulation change did occur at the Bagaces/Sapoa transition,about C.E. 800, with the arrival of new ceramic styles, fig-urines, burial patterns, and other elements of material cul-ture (McCafferty 2011; McCafferty and Dennett 2013). Inregional settlement pattern surveys there is also evidence ofsite abandonment and relocation at the transition (Niemel2003; Salgado 1996). This population change conforms toexpectations of the Out of Mexico hypothesis—the prob-lem being that there is almost no evidence that the new-comers were Mexican! Following the second suggestionof the “age of an old man,” however, another dramaticchange seems to have occurred at about C.E. 1250 with theabandonment of all the sites that we have tested, suggest-ing the possibility of another influx of migrants, perhapsthe Nahua Nicarao. Until Late Postclassic sites have beenadequately tested this possibility remains open for furtherinvestigation.

The Mexican Legacy in Nicaragua 115

Figure 12.5. Stylistic indications of a central Mexican religious pantheon: feathered serpent imagery(left) and Ehecatl supports (right). Photo by the author.

More Discussion, or Dealing with BadlyBehaved Data

As satisfying as it is to say “nyah, nyah, you got itwrong!” to the historians, there are real-world consequencesto overturning a country’s historical, and political, identity.And this did not go unnoticed by Nicaraguan colleagues!An important component of our research program is col-laboration with experts from the region, with public andprofessional presentations for all levels of the interestedstakeholders. In North American scholarship there is oftena stronger sense of the apolitical ivory tower than in LatinAmerica. So the gringo announcing that ‘the emperor hasno clothes’ was not taken with the amusement with which Ihad hoped.

My first experience was at a museum presentation inRivas, near the Santa Isabel site, when I first expressed myconcern over the lack of comales and the implication that theinhabitants may not have consumed corn tortillas. My closecollaborator Jorge Zambrana, the most senior Nicaraguanarchaeologist and a solid scholar, calmly rebutted that “ofcourse they ate maize and that [I] just hadn’t recognizedcomal sherds.” It is now ten years later and there are still nocomal sherds.

A few years after that, and after numerous presentationsin Nicaragua, I attended an important conference on CentralAmerican archaeology held every two years in El Salvador.Ramiro Garcia, then of the National Museum, presentedon the beautiful polychrome pottery and came to the tra-ditional conclusion that they present clear evidence of theMexican connection. I then presented a retrospective on theSanta Isabel project (McCafferty 2005), entitled “Buscandolos Nahuas de Nicaragua . . . encontrando ??? [Searching

for the Nahuas of Nicaragua . . . finding ???], with a moreforceful speculation on the lack of Mesoamerican funda-mentals. At the end of my presentation the irate Minister ofthe Nicaraguan Institute of Culture leaped to his feet anddenounced me as a “chichimec,” a Nahuatl term for “bar-barian from the north.” This is clearly a politically chargedtopic that requires careful consideration.

One of my father’s sage expressions was “Don’t tell meyour problems, tell me your solutions.” So how should I ne-gotiate these turbulent waters when my data behave badly?My Nicaraguan colleagues are terrific, and I have learnedmuch through our collaboration. The educational system inwhich they have been trained, however, does not emphasizecritical evaluation of data as much as it does recitation ofknown “facts.” It also strongly emphasizes skepticism ofall things gringo—new additions to our team have openlyresisted new ways to excavate, record data, and interpretevidence. This is a common problem in community-basedcollaboration, and it can be both rewarding and frustrat-ing. By including Nicaraguan archaeology students in theresearch I am inviting them to consider new ways of envi-sioning the archaeological past and their own histories whilealso including them in the dialogue of co-creating that past.

I am also strongly committed to the ideas of presentingand publishing in ways accessible to all stakeholders. Wehave often published Spanish language articles in popularnewsletters and local journals accessible to residents ofRivas and Granada. We have also presented results inmuseum lectures, and exhibited materials in museums inRivas and Granada. We regularly appear on local radioand television news. More academic presentations haveoccurred in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, as wellas in English-language professional meetings, and I have

116 Geoffrey McCafferty

extensive project sites on the Internet (McCafferty 2008b,2009, 2010b).

In these ways we attempt to get the message out on thesubstantive basis of our interpretations, emphasizing tech-nical studies such as radiocarbon dating and petrographicanalysis, and a more holistic approach to archaeologicaldata than is typically used when budgetary constraints rarelyallow analysis to extend beyond rudimentary ceramic clas-sification. These strategies have been somewhat successful,and Nicaraguan students and professionals alike are begin-ning to reference these new ideas rather than rote recitationof the traditional “Mexican” interpretation.

Identity politics can be a dangerous game, and chal-lenging entrenched ideas is always dicey. I would like tothink that this new way of conceptualizing the past servesto empower traditional peoples who might embrace a strongautochthonous past. Unfortunately, the indigenous groupsthat are most visible in the area self-identify as Nahuas, soin fact I am also disenfranchising their traditional claims. Atpresent, my loophole is that we have still not found evidenceof the Late Postclassic leading up to European contact andtherefore most relevant to comparisons with ethnohistoricalevidence, and we hold out hope that when we do, it will in-clude abundant evidence for Mexican migration. Until thattime we will continue to integrate Nicaraguan scholars inthe interpretive process in order to present a more empir-ically based archaeological past that may serve to reshapethe present, with a more nuanced perspective on Mesoamer-ican interaction and greater emphasis on indigenousdevelopment.

Acknowledgements

Funding for these projects was provided by the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, andthe University of Calgary. Work was done under permissionof the Instituto Nicaraguense de Cultura. These ideas havebeen developed following many hours of discussion withmy Nicaraguan colleagues: Bosco Moroney, Oscar Pavon,William Vasquez, and especially Jorge Zambrana; the opin-ions expressed are my own.

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