Mexican Jaguar: Enduring Force of Nature and Culture
Tara A. Spears
The world’s big cats have inspired and frightened for centuries. Many are not aware the exotic jaguar resides in Nayarit, Mexico to this day. The jaguar has been Mexico’s most enduring symbolic animal for more than three thousand years. The jaguar’s image, sometimes appearing alongside the smaller ocelot and the plain-coated puma, prowls the art of most ancient Mexican civilizations, from the Olmec to the Aztec to the Maya. In the years following the Spanish conquest, during the colonial period, and still today the jaguar has retained a persistent grip on the Mexican imagination according to anthropologists.
It’s easy to understand why this beautiful but deadly hunter evokes powerful emotions throughout the centuries. Strong and agile, with razor-sharp claws and deadly fangs, this impressive beast was identified with the qualities which made human hunters and warriors brave and successful. As a stealthy silent killer with an acute sense of smell, and an ability to see in the dark with mirrored eyes, the jaguar was identified with sorcery and magic, and regarded as the spirit-helper of shamans and sorcerers, as well as the most dazzling symbol of priests and kings.
The jaguar’s natural talent for hunting on land, up trees, and in water led to it being regarded in mythology as the ‘master of animals’, and spiritual lord of the powers of fertility in the natural world. All animals are the jaguar’s prey, but it is prey to none. Only human beings kill jaguars, which may explain why indigenous Mexican people regard humans and jaguars as spiritual equals. Thinking about the world in this traditional way, every man carries the jaguar within himself, and every jaguar may be a man in disguise. It is no wonder then that the jaguar creates anxiety and fear when suddenly encountered in the depths of the tropical rainforest.
Whatever qualities the jaguar inspired in the Olmec people, such strange images appear to have established a long and sacred tradition in ancient Mexican art and religion. The jaguar appeared in the art of many later civilizations and continues today. The jaguar’s brilliantly-colored pelt was used as royal clothing for dynastic warrior-kings, and as a covering for royal thrones – some of which were carved in the shape of a feline, as discovered at several Maya cities such as Chichen Itza.
Aztec kings, like their Classic Maya predecessors, used the jaguar to enhance their social status. As the jaguar was lord of animals, so an Aztec emperor was ruler of men. Aztec emperors wore jaguar clothing into battle, and sat in judgment on a throne covered with the animal’s multicolored skin.
In Mexico, jaguars are a protected species listed as endangered (Semarnat, 2002). While the Mexican Jaguar remains on the endangered animal list there are a couple of strong breeding areas in western Mexico. However, Nayarit, an important habitat for jaguars for centuries, has experienced the continuous construction of roads on the coast and in the mountains of Nayarit (Semarnat, 2005) that is creating significant, permanent fragmentation of the jaguars’ habitat and natural corridors according to environmentalists.
My love affair with the Mexican jaguar began during a vacation to Cancun in 1999 that included a tour of Chichen Itza. At that time, in the ruins of “Chicken Itza there was a stone figure called the ‘Red Jaguar’. It is made of limestone painted in red with inlaid turquoise disks and is also known as the ‘Mayan Jaguar’ or Chac-Mool. Climbing inside the jaguar pyramid and seeing the jaguar altar so moved me that I decided to move to Mexico. One week after I viewed the altar first-hand, the altar area was closed to the public. Experiencing the ancient beliefs in situ was very powerful.
Across Mexico, in pre-Columbian, colonial, and modern times, indigenous ideas about the jaguar were not concerned with worshipping the natural animal. Instead, the ideas and beliefs of what the jaguar meant and what it represented for human beings were part of native Mexican ways of seeing and understanding the world – and of how beliefs about the cycle of life and death could be made visible and relevant to ordinary people. It cannot be estimated how the jaguar contributed to Mexican culture. Nayarit and Jaltemba Bay is so fortunate to provide a home to this amazing wild animal!The jaguar’s image, sometimes appearing alongside the smaller ocelot and the plain-coated puma, prowls the art of most ancient Mexican civilizations, from the Olmec to the Aztec to the Maya. 
