Mesoamerican Indian, member of any of the indigenous peoples inhabiting Mexico and Central America (roughly between latitudes 14° N and 22° N).
Mesoamerican Indian cultures have a common origin in the pre-Columbian civilizations of the area. Most Mesoamerican peoples belong to one of three linguistic groups: the Mayan (or Macro-Mayan), the Oto-Manguean, or the Uto-Aztecan. Mayan peoples, with the exception of a northeastern enclave, the Huastecs, live at the southeastern extremity of Mesoamerica. Oto-Mangueans are to be found in a wide area of Mesoamerica between Uto-Aztecan peoples to the north and east and Mayan and other peoples to the south. Oto-Manguean languages (now extinct) were spoken south of the Mayan area along the Pacific coasts of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua; and one Oto-Manguean language, North Pame, spoken in the central desert of highland Mexico, is outside Mesoamerica to the north. The main branches of the Oto-Manguean family are Oto-Pamean, Amuzgoan, Popolocan, Chinantecan, Mixtecan, Zapotecan, Manguean, and Subtiaba-Tlapanecan. As a result of the expansion of the Aztec empire centred in the valley of Mexico, Uto-Aztecan enclaves are found throughout the area. Tarascan, a language the filiation of which is still in doubt, is spoken in the highlands of Michoacán, Mexico. (See also Mesoamerican Indian languages.)
Traditional culture patterns
Settlement patterns
The territorial unit that has prime importance for most Mesoamerican peoples is the municipio, a unit roughly corresponding to a county in Great Britain or the United States. Each municipio has a municipal centre where most civic, religious, and marketing activities take place. In the modern pattern, this centre is the largest settlement in the area. The usual elements, which vary according to the size and importance of the community, are laid out according to the standard pattern imposed by early Spanish administrators throughout New Spain: a plaza surrounded by public edifices (church or chapel, curacy, jail, perhaps a school, and a meeting place for civil authorities). Houses nearest the plaza are those of the principal persons. Larger communities are often divided into sociopolitical enclaves called barrios.
An older pattern, still found in some areas (as among some Mayan peoples of the south and among the Huichol of the north), is for the municipio centre to be an empty town, occupied continuously only by civil and religious authorities and perhaps a few merchants. The bulk of the population resides in hamlets or on individual farms most of the year, moving to town residences only for short periods either to transact business or to participate in a religious festival.
Social, political, and religious institutions
The basic social and economic unit of Mesoamerica is the extended family of from two to four generations. There is a strong tendency for the extended family to fragment into individual nuclear families, each consisting of one couple and their children. Kinship is usually reckoned bilaterally, with no distinction being made between kinsmen related through males and those related through females. Such distinctions are made in a few Mayan and Zoque communities, and they are common immediately north of Mesoamerica. These and other facts have led some anthropologists to suggest that small preconquest communities were patrilineal clans or lineages. Named clans and lineages have actually been reported in a few present-day Tzeltal Mayan communities.
Throughout Mesoamerica generally, newly married couples tend to locate near the groom’s family in a slight majority of cases. Inheritance also generally favours the male line, including family names, which are almost invariably inherited from males. Inherited names are now most commonly of Spanish origin, but native surnames are known among some Mayan groups. In certain Mixtec (Oto-Manguean) communities, a man’s first name becomes the surname of his offspring.
Marriage, traditionally an alliance between two families, is initiated by the groom’s parents and arranged by them directly or through the services of a go-between. A period of bride service by the groom, often involving at least temporary residence with the bride’s family, is not uncommon. Polygyny is known and socially acceptable but is not common.
Political and religious institutions are traditionally bound together into a complex of hierarchically arranged year-long offices through which adult males may attain status and power in the community. All males must serve in the lower-ranked offices at one time or another, but only the most successful attain the highest positions. Progress through the ranks typically involves an alternation between civil and religious offices. Successful passage to the highest ranks results in election to the position of elder. Elders form a more or less informal group of senior men to whom the community looks for experienced guidance in policy matters and in times of crisis.
Mesoamerican religion, called Christo-pagan by anthropologists, is a complex syncretism of indigenous beliefs and the Christianity of early Roman Catholic missionaries. A hierarchy of indigenous supernatural beings (some benign, others not) have been reinterpreted as Christian deities and saints. Mountain and water spirits are appeased at special altars in sacred places by gift or animal sacrifice. Individuals have companion spirits in the form of animals or natural phenomena, such as lightning or shooting stars. Disease is associated with witchcraft or failure to appease malevolent spirits.