Atlihuetzia: an exemplary mural

For another early Tlaxcalan mural, we visit the now roofless church of La Purísima Atlihuetzia, another once substantial 16th century Franciscan monastery located not far from Tizatlan.

Although naturally much degraded, vestiges of murals and friezes can still be traced along the nave walls. And with the prolonged weathering of the whitewashed surfaces, one extraordinary if only partial fresco has emerged from the south wall of the church.

Recent research has established that this “exemplary” mural, which was hastily whitewashed in the late 1600s because of its supposed emergence as the focus of an idolatrous cult among the Indian community, refers to the fate of a Spaniard, one Valentín de la Roca. 
   According to legend, because of his blasphemous disdain for the sacraments and catechism of the Catholic church, Valentín was one day seized by a large, fire breathing serpent and for his sins consumed in flames and consigned to Hell.
   This cautionary tale, with illustrations, was featured in popular religious confessionary tracts and manuals that circulated in the New World, especially among the eschatologically obsessed Franciscans. The Atlihuetzia mural, however, is the only known pictorial example of this theme, although there may have been others, since its portrayal was forbidden by the Inquisition in 1689. 

In the now faded but originally bright polychrome mural, the principal panel shows the rattlesnake wound around the unfortunate figure of Valentín with flames licking at his feet. 

He is surrounded by six, small scale illustrations of his sins—each with a red demon urging him on. The best preserved scene, on the lower left, depicts the richly dressed Valentín on his knees confessing before a friar. Sins in the form of toads and lizards stream from his mouth, reminiscent of the mural at Tlaquiltenango, while the red demon at his shoulder urges a false confession.

   On the lower right, Valentín appears unrepentant before his civil judges together with a partial inscription in Nahuatl, referring to the “shame of sin,” indicating that although it was a Spaniard portrayed, the mural was intended primarily as a warning for the indigenous congregation—a motif we saw at Actopan and Xoxoteco.

Few other mural fragments survive at Atlihuetzia, save for this frieze with eagles, angels and christic monograms.

The author at Atlihuetzia 1999

text © 2016 Richard D. Perry

images by the author, Robert Jackson and Juan M. Alcantara