Experts translate texts from Mexican Indian cults

Mexico City, Mar 9 (EFE).- Two literary pieces written in Nahuatl and attributed to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, which have been translated by experts, preserve the Indian cult of mountains in a disguised language, ethnohistory specialist Margarita Loera said.

The literary collection Mercurio Encomiastico, which includes the two texts by Sor Juana and others by 16 Indian chiefs of the 17th and 18th centuries, was translated from Nahuatl to Spanish by experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, with the help of native speakers of that language, Loera said in a statement.

Juana Ines de Asbaje y Ramirez de Santillana, known as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, lived from 1648-1695 and entered the convent to pursue her vocation as poet, writer and playwright. She was called the 10th Muse and the Phoenix of America.

"The introduction to a play attributable to Sor Juana, but above all the literary pieces by native chieftains, reveal a pantheistic invocation of the forces of nature," Loera said.

One of the oldest references to the myth of the "love between volcanoes," of pre-Columbian origin, tells of the "relationship" between the Iztaccihuatl (Sleeping Woman) Volcano and Cerro Venacho mountain, both in central Mexico, Loera said.

What is most noteworthy about the transcript of the literary collection is the glimpse it give us of a language full of cultural disguises used by Indian leaders at the time to conceal the cult of mountains that they wished to preserve, Loera said.

Indian chiefs began to write their own history at the end of the 17th century and throughout the 18th century, and "what is interesting about the works in question is that they refer to the deities and cult of water, which makes them a documentary gem," Loera said.

The texts by Sor Juana, according to a historical comparison, must have been written when she was between the ages of 13 and 16 but before she entered the viceroy's court, and not when she was 8 as some authors have claimed, Loera said.

The translation of this work will be a volume commemorating the Bicentennial of Independence, with the provisional title of "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, una Flor de los Volcanes" (Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a Flower among Volcanoes), Loera said.

The work was discovered years ago by historian Augusto Vallejo Villa, the specialist said.