Dances of the colonial period (and probably before) typically included a Lord of the Animals, called the “Pastor” in Spanish-influenced dance. Mexican indigenous religious belief united humans and animals as shared inhabitants of the universe. One thinks of the way cat eyes can appear glow with reflected light at night. Spots, whiskers, and fangs are prominent features. Twentieth-century dance masks featuring jaguars. Below we see a sampling in the Ragatz family mask collection, now maintained by artist Karima Muyaes in the family home in Azcapotzalco. Jaguars are very prevalent in dances in Mexican indigenous communities. (Recent research is suggesting that there were not two orders, just one, represented by the eagle-jaguar pairing.) Some warriors had an association with both animals, being cuauhtli océlotl (eagle-jaguars). The jaguar was the companion to the eagle, the other order of warriors. An order of Aztec warriors took the name of this feared and respected feline. According to the curators of the Templo Mayor museum, for the Nahuas, the jaguar symbolized the night and could serve as an animal spirit-guide (nahualli) for elite men, for individuals connected with the supernatural, and had connections to some deities, such as Tezcatlipoca. This jaguar head, above, so beautifully carved, probably formed part of a cuauhxicalli, or recipient where the hearts of sacrificial victims were placed. Post-Classic Mexica jaguar head found in the Templo Mayor and now displayed in that museum. News about the discovery of an artifact in Chiapas, 2,000 years old, representing a jaguar.Wikipedia article, “ Jaguars in Mesoamerican Cultures“.YouTube video, “ The Jaguar: Power and Divinity in Mesoamerica,” BBC 2009.Sandra Busatta, “ The Jaguar: The Aztecs’ Dark Side of Power” - is a full text article that you can download from if you join (for free) - from Antrocom 2007.You have permission to copy the images into PowerPoints for educational purposes. Visit Justin Kerr’s Maya Vase Data Base and do a search for “jaguar” - scroll and review the images.Mexicolore’s “ The Jaguar in Mexico” (Nicholas Saunders) gives attention to thriving interest in jaguars in Mexican cultures from pre-Columbian times to the present.Thus, for practical purposes, the translation “jaguar warriors” is still okay.” Resources The evidence strongly favours a primary association with jaguars, for cultic, cosmological and ideological reasons. We don’t know whether Aztec *o’o:ce:lo’* only wore jaguar skins, or whether some of them were running around in ocelot uniforms. Clearly, ‘OCELOT - varicolored like a *jaguar*’ would be a better fit. It is small, squat, rather long, the same as a Castilian cat ashen, whitish, varicolored - varicolored like an ocelot, blotched with black.” The significant translational oddity here is the comparison: “OCELOT small,, the same as a Castilian cat, - varicolored like an *ocelot*”. As a result, they rendered both *o:ce:lo:tl* and *tla’coo:ce:lo:tl* as “ocelot”.The indigenous consultants for the Florentine Codex descriptions, however, clearly regarded the *tla’coo:ce:lo:tl*, which they also named the * tla’comiztli* (‘semi-puma’), as a separate animal, not merely a different kind of *o:ce:lo:tl*, as the following passage (FC 11: 3) implies: , translated by Dibble and Anderson as ‘OCELOT.’ Also they name it *tlacomiztli*. The zoologist they consulted, Stephen Durrant, recommended ‘jaguar’ over their ‘ocelot’ (Florentine Codex, Bk. I have no idea why Dibble and Anderson (or Anderson and Dibble) decided to continue translating plain *o:ce:lo:tl* simply as ‘ocelot’, which is quite a misleading definition. The latter (*o:ce:lo:tl*) is actually ‘jaguar’ par excellence, whereas *tla’coo:ce:lo:tl* (literally, ‘semi-jaguar’) is ‘ocelot’. 25, 2012: “In the ongoing discussion of cat terms Kier Salmon brings up the subject of Nahuatl *ocelotl*. Gordon Whittaker, Aztlan Listserv posting, Feb. Jaguar or Ocelot? (Both existed, but jaguar was more central.) We are assembling here resources for a study of this important animal and its ethnobiological significance. The jaguar is ubiquitous across Mesoamerican art and across time. Here, the jaguar is paired with a number (12), which suggests a calendar date, for the jaguar/ocelot was a day-sign. Jaguar head (center, right) in Zapotec glyphs, in a Monte Albán museum piece.
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