Inculturation and “The Rashomon Effect” Causing Muted Signs to Speak in Cholula,Mexico

Abstract

Standing at the historic center of Cholula, Mexico, is a Spanish medieval Catholic church built over a decidedly larger ancient Aztec pyramid, memorializing the latter’s conquest under the power of the cross. In the art of inculturation, the sign of the “vanquished pyramid” and its resonances in postcolonial cultures of the Global South, kindle the interpretive impulse to drill down on religio-cultural layers that had been silenced by the sentence of colonial missionary history. To cause muted signs to speak anew, the study employs a creative analytical approach known as the “Rashomon Effect” to hold divergent voices in dialectical tension so that a truly reconciling inculturation becomes a promise and a possibility through a pilgrimage of truth-telling.