Akuniya (the water deity of La Ciénaga)

Tlapanec · deity · Tlapanec traditional religion; continuing · deity

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.

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