Juan Alcázar and Goddess Tlanchana

Juan Alcázar and Goddess Tlanchana

The snake, also known as The Great Water Viper, plays a leading role in Mesoamerican cosmology and indigenous mythology, being a symbol of fertility and water.

What we know as the mermaid has similar symbolism. This mythological being is also strongly present in pre-Columbian art, but is sometimes referred to interchangeably as a half-fish woman, or a snake-woman.

Throughout history, different civilisations have adapted ancient myths to their particular cosmology, so the same goddess can take on different names and different divine properties.

The Matlatzinca people, who originated before the Mexica, worshipped the goddess Tlanchana, who they called queen mother, lake sorceress and protective spirit. She was guardian mother and protector of the Nine Waters. They described her as a being with a greyish or dark skin, a fish-woman or snake-woman, covered in necklaces and flowers, with long hair, bare breasts, and a crown on her forehead.

Tlanchana was a vengeful and possessive goddess, but she was also worshipped for her protective and nurturing nature. Duality is a typical characteristic of Mesoamerican deities and pre-Columbian cultures.

After the Mexica invasion, they dubbed her “lake sorceress”, and related her to Tezcatlipoca. He was lord of the night, of heaven and earth, with a protective nature and a symbol of life and fertility, as well as happiness. She thereby adopts the identity of Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of lakes and water currents, patron of births, protector of coastal navigation in ancient Mexico, and the deity of love and fertility.

The Nahua of La Huasteca later describe her as a woman who is half fish, reducing her snakelike characteristics to just the presence of a viper’s tongue. However, with the arrival of monks during the colonisation by the Spanish, this being is banished due to her demonic character. It is said this is why the Nine Waters dried up and the people that lived there changed their agricultural and fishing activities.

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fishing activities. + The myth in the work

In the work Culebra de agua (“Water Snake”), by Juan Alcázar, we can recognise this deity by some of the attributes given in the different descriptions mentioned. We don’t see a literal representation, but the sum of the symbols reveals it to us. This use of schematic symbolic language can remind us of the paranoic-critical method in surrealism in which the work is read based on the sum of all the signs in it. The portrayal of a woman with these physical characteristics coiled around a snake could therefore easily be understood as a snake-woman.