The religious context of an "unholy marriage": Elite alienation and popular unrest in the indigenous communities of Chiapa, 1570-1680

This article seeks to demonstrate that the cofradías (lay confraternities) in late-sixteenth-century Chiapa, Mexico, replaced preexisting calpulli arrangements and norms within the early colonial indigenous communities, generating new, turbulent social and religious currents. As this study emphasizes, the cofrádias were not a "leveling mechanism" as previous scholars estimated, but instead exacerbated group conflicts. On the one hand, they become the loci for Hispanicized Indians, members of local elites, to separate themselves from the commoners, in the search for religious and cultural autonomy. On the other, the cofradías became a stage for the Indian commoners upon which to recover their sacred ritual sites and old concepts of territoriality, as an inseparable part of maintaining a distinct and unique identity under the colonial brand.