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The purpose of this article is to analyze nine existing symbols in the poetic work of Alfredo Ramirez Celestino†. The poems, written by the poet and ethnohistorian in his mother tongue, Nahuatl, reflect the Xalitecan cosmovision and perform an ideological function within Nahua society in Alto Balsas, Guerrero. In order to support Ramirez’s poetry as an entire symbolic system, the paper applies fundamental principles and methodology of structuralism to state the symbolic units. The major premises of Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Carl Gustav Jung and Joseph Campbell are taken into account.

The three stories included in this paper were recorded by the reseatther during the summer of 1978, in Chililico and Huejutla, both in the municipality of Huejutla de Reyes, Hidalgo. Vatiations originally found in the Nahuatl test —e.g. optional changes between the phonernes /t/ and /tl/— have been left unmodified. The first story, narrated by Ildefonso Maya Hernandez, deals with the origin of the Huasteca Nahua Indians and the great flood. The second story —"The Rablyit"— is a somewhat syncretic version of the first, mixing both Nahua and biblical features, and again using the rabbit and the great flood as a dominating event. The final story is a modified version of Cinderella, which could also be titled "Mary Ashes".

The paper presents a transcription and Spanish translation of a folktale in Sierra Popoluca, a Mixe- Zoquean language spoken in Southern Veracruz, in the municipio of Soteapan. Published texts in this language are very scarce, so the text may serve as a resource for future studies. The text was dictated to Salomé Gutiérrez Morales, a trained linguist as well as native speaker, by his close relative Jesús Gutiérrez from the village of Amamaloya. It was subsequently checked for details in transcription and translation by both authors in collaboration with another member of the speech community, Nicasio Gutiérrez Juárez. Opting not to present a morphological analysis, the authors have chosen a very literal translation style which should make it simpler, with some help from a grammar such as Elson (1960), to work out an analysis. As is true of much of the lore of the Popolucas, the contents of the tale is predominately of European extraction, in part rather closely resembling the story of "Hansel and Gretel" from the collection of the German brothers Grimm, and similar stories known also from the oral traditions of Spain, among other European countries. It appears to be rather popular in most parts of southern Veracruz, and perhaps beyond, not only among other indigenous groups, such the Popolucas of Texistepec, but also in the general, rural Spanish-speaking population.The story may be summarized as follows. Two children, a boy and a girl, are left out in the country by their father because they are unwanted by their stepmother. They are adopted by an old, blind, wicked woman, the Tzitzimat (or Chichimeca, in Nahuatl-derived Spanish). However, managing to kill the Tzitzimat, the children make their escape. From the cauldron into which they have pushed her spring two dogs. When, later on, the girl h as plans to marry a giant whom they have met during their wanderings, the dogs help out the boy. After an unsuccessful attempt by the dogs to kill the giant, the girl takes revenge on them by hiding a bone in her brother's pillow to kill him. The boy is brought back to life by the dogs. Later follows an episode where the boy saves the life of a princess, killing a snake which had been a threat to her. A Negro, who falsely claims the honor of having saved the life of the princess, is shown to be a liar when the dogs bring the tongue of the serpent to the king as proof that the boy was the true savior of the king's daughter.

In a 1783 report preserved in the papers of the Inquisition at the Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico, the parish priest of Tempoal, Panuco, Veracruz, denounces a number of unorthodox practices in his village. They are: corruption of Catholic teachings, pagan medical practices, the celebration of feasts centered about the flying pole dance, unorthodox ideas about the afterlife, and beliefs in the evil eye and ailments caused by the "loss of shadow".

In the first of these true stories, transcribed in the Otomi of San Antonio Huehuetla, Hidalgo, the inhabitants decide to go make offerings to the Lagoon, which threatens to flood the town. They take music, liquor, chickens and turkeys, cut paper dolls, food, candles, hallucinogenous plants, flowers and a basket of clothes to the Non-Indian Flower Woman who dwells in the Lagoon and who is appeased by the offering.In the second text two young men set out to look for workon the road. Their adventures, generally unfortunate, take them as far as Poza Rica, Veracruz, from which they return home defeated and hungry.

Little is known of the life of Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, author of one of our major sources on ancient Mesoamerican religion. The ethnologist Noemí Quezada discovered, transcribed and presents here a manuscript from the papers of theInquisition in the Archivo General de la Nación in which Ruiz de Alarcón is accused before the Holy Office of having celebrated more than one auto da fe during 1613-1614 in Atenango, today in the State of Guerrero. The documents contain information on witchcraft, the use of the drug ololiuhqui and Alarcón's persecution of Indians who had relapsed to their native practices.