Akuniya (the water deity of La Ciénaga)
Tlapanec · deity · Tlapanec traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Akuniya is the water deity of the Tlapanec (Me'phaa) of Guerrero, held to dwell in the La Ciénaga marsh. To this deity the people made offerings, formerly on the twenty-fifth of April, to call down the rains and secure the fertility of the fields; such observances have waned since the mid-twentieth century under the pressure of the Catholic mission. Bound to a single named place rather than to the cosmic genealogy of the Sun, the Moon and the Fire, Akuniya belongs to the localized water-and-rain dimension of Me'phaa religion and carries the domain-god element aku shared with the other Tlapanec deities below the dominant Sun-and-Moon pair.
Domains
- water
- rain
Powers
- to send the rain and grant fertility
- to dwell within the waters of the La Ciénaga marsh
Epithets
- AkuniyaEncyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 8 (G. K. Hall, 1995), 'Tlapanec' (secondary)
Sources
- Akuniya is the Me'phaa (Tlapanec) water deity dwelling in the La Ciénaga marsh, to whom offerings were made to call down rain and grant fertility.: Dow, James W., and Robert Van Kemper, eds., Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 8: Middle America and the Caribbean (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1995), 'Tlapanec' (secondary); Oettinger, Marion, Una comunidad tlapaneca: sus linderos sociales y territoriales (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1980) (secondary)