Between “San Nicolás Tolentino” and the Jaguar. A Cult to the Rain in Zitlala, Guerrero

Abstract

The first Christian novohispanic worshiping were intimate associate to the natives and ancestral gods distinctive from the nahuas, otomies, mayans, mixtecs ethnic groups which religious diversity and thus the cult to the nature’s forces, they managed to blend their deities along with the occidental saints. It was a long and slow religious assimilation process, whose most of the people in “Zitlala” (place of stars), embraced their own way to reinterpret a religious catholic system, such as the system impose in the middle of the sixteenth century, it started off with the evangelization labor of the augustinian friars “Jerónima de San Esteban” and “Agustin de la Coruña”, in Zitlala, Chilapa and Tlapa, towns whose nowadays are found in the high and low part of the mountain region in the state of Guerrero. Subsequently to this process in Zitlala, starts a very particular cult to “San Nicolás Tolentino” town’s main saint, which them worship, nonetheless sharing this cult with the already worshiped jaguar, through the connection of the mesoamerican men and the nature surrounding them which interpret and comprehend. Despite of the sudden changes because of the covid-19 pandemic the Zitlala township proceed to assembly in honor to this cult which is significant to their day to day.