Topos y cosmogonía: las deidades lacustres de la cuenca del alto Lerma

Abstract

The image of the mermaid has received little attention in Spanish America, except for in the Andean region. In Peru, as well as in New Spain, the “lords of water” in the central highlands reappeared prominently during the colonial period. In the Valley of Toluca, their roots probably go back in the Classic period, when the banks of the Lerma River were settled. Veneration honoring “the lords of water”—on the day of Saint Matthew— still revered in the 1950s, as well as the modern-day account of the life of the sireno (“merman”) and the sirena (mermaid) as a couple permit a better understanding of the rise and fall of the image of the mermaid, as well as its multiple implications for lake societies in the upper Lerma River Basin.