French ethnologist Danièle Dehouve dedicates an article to the study of the ritual sacrifices of contemporary animals by Tlapanec Amerindiansin pages 499-517 of El Sacrificio Humano en la Tradición Religiosa Mesoamericana, edited by Leonardo López Lujánet al: the foremost authorities on human sacrifice in pre-Columbian America.
As a typical indigenista, Dehouve’s scholarly piece contains no single line condemning cruelty; in this case, the cruelty perpetrated with the animals, despite the fact that she writes that the Amerind sacrifice in the 21st century is slow to produce ‘agony’ (her word) in the animal, and that such practices are linked to the human sacrifice of yesteryear:
At the base of this investigation is the conviction that the principles and structures that organised the sacrifice before the age of the Spanish conquistadors persist in contemporary sacrificial acts, even though the type of victim has changed.[1]
For more information about this most reliable source about Amerind sacrifice, human and animal, see this appendix to my essayThe Return of Quetzalcoatl.
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[1] En la base de esta investigación está la convicción de que los principios y estructuras que organizaron el sacrificio antes de la Conquista persisten en los actos sacrificiales contemporáneos, a pesar de que haya cambiado el tipo de víctima.