Religious drama in Nahuatl: the autos of New Spain, 1530s-1540s

Within twenty years of the conquest, Nahua towns were staging full-length religious plays in Nahuatl, with indigenous actors and casts drawn from the ruling lineages. Two friars describe the productions in detail — the paradise built at a hospital door, the burning hell with a false door, the siege of Jerusalem fought by Tlaxcalan and Mexica companies — and the same pages record what the plays were for and whom they were used against.