“Cobrando Cuentas for Aztlanahuac”

Extract from Part One of Indigenous Quotient / Stalking Words – American Indian Heritage as Future

By Juan Gómez-Quiñones

Mapping

American Indian¹ ancestries and heritages ought to be integral to K-12 curriculums and university explorations and graduate expositions for obvious reasons – contemporary universalist understandings.² I refer not to a special presentation, project option, or ethnographic appreciation here and there, but rather to the full integration of Native American histories and cultures into academic curriculums. The Indigenous voice matters, yesterday and today, in substantive pedagogical and philosophical discourses.

The matter is too often disparaged or challenged. Two broad arguments are raised against Native American historical appreciation and existential recognition: 1) Indian realities exist largely in the past and are thus best left to certified academics; and 2) Indian consciousness can be appropriated for any representational purpose by anyone.³ Related to these are two other arguable convictions: a) that there is a lack of continuity between contemporary and historical Native American cultural practices; and b) that Native Americans are on a world scale insignificant civilizational presences. Ironically, these negative arguments are voiced at a time when Indian-related political actions receive unprecedented media coverage, and when Indian religion and spirituality has become a matter of intense interest in certain Indigenous, and other, circles.

I believe that observation and experience enable us to clearly appreciate the continuities that subsume a civilizational past and indeed a present. Today we are better informed to explore the range of Native American societies than at any time previously. Scholars now understand that Mesoamerican culture spans a broad range of cultural practices and beliefs, from the aesthetic to the zoological, from the past to the present. Our consciousness will be raised by a thorough education in Native American heritage, provided we address this subject with scholarly respect and without harm to anyone.

In this essay I challenge the historiography that promotes disparagement of Indian heritage and a fundamental denial of Indian’s cultural contributions. These negative attitudes are propagated through, among other things, the use of a denigrating vocabulary. Words such as aborigenism in English and aborigenismo in Spanish are part and parcel of an anti-Indian ideological construction utilized by admirers of imperialism, as well as false liberal friends, who feign empathy while covertly supporting imperialist agendas.

To understand the origins of Aborigenism, let us understand time and space specifics: during the sixteenth century, Europeans invaded the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. These encounters are not fiction, they are historical facts. The encounters provoked an Indian perception and a European perception. Only partialities are known of the Indian perception, but two mega-facts glare: one is that the Europeans were a disaster for the Indigenous; the other fact is that the Indigenous continue to exist and to experience the effects of the disaster. The Indigenous are responsible for themselves, as are Europeans, and between the Indian realities and the European perceptions lie bedrocks for transcultural understandings as well as for continued misunderstandings. We must acknowledge our mutual responsibility, and we must act. Encounters do not erase responsibility, but proactive resolutions may: Autonomy and Indigeneity.

A critique of the construction of European-premised appropriations and annexations must initiate the Indian question.⁴ The responsibility for European actions belongs to Europeans. Europeans committed crimes as individuals, as well as on behalf of their governments and churches. As they entered first the Caribbean and then Mesoamerica, government agents for the mini-domains of Castille/Navarre ultimately became agents for the Hapsburg mega-monarchy, the closest entity to an overarching European political center at the time. And thus the exemplary “History of Conquest” waged by the European chieftains – Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés and all the others – was waged on behalf of Christian Europe for profit. These chieftains and their subordinates were Europeans, Christians, monarchists, and also profiteers. Thus a particular amalgam of the ideological, cultural, political, and economic comprised their sense of self, as well as their avowed group membership.

Colonial-inspired Aborigenism implicitly denies that Native American pan-cultural regions comprise one of the relatively few areas in the world from which a distinct culture, seminal to human development, arose.⁵ Having inhabited Native America long before any North Atlantic contacts, Indians share a culture and civilization of great antiquity. A recognizable, documented, continuous cultural history began several thousand years ago when the Native American groups flourishing in northern and central lands built their societies. Indian peoples from the areas known today as the Southwestern United States and greater Mexico interacted throughout this protean cultural arena. Their shared cultural elements and visible historical structures were crucial to later cultural development. Colonialist’s denial of the deep historicity of these people is central to the colonialist rationalization of conquest and genocide: Indians were savage and violent, period. Europeans were a deliverance; while for Indians, of course, Europeans were death.

Individual and group memberships, as well as conscious and semi-conscious identity constructions, inform arguments on behalf of the Indigenous with ironic twists. For those of us who are as unmistakably of Indigenous descent as our own grandmothers, to consider the Indigenous is on the one hand a form of self-interrogation. On the other hand, we live alongside an “Other” whose consciousness undeniably intersects with ours: I am a Mexican-Indian in the United States. One consciousness thus challenges the other. To paraphrase the poet alurista, self and critic are at once a creation and negation. As we learn, we fashion ourselves, become multiple. Once simply the insider, we are now also the examiner and the critic, plumbing the consciousness anterior to both. The cross-examinations may entail the knowledge that being Indian amounts to a single existential position. This stance requires respect, modesty, and sincerity. One must take care not to usurp the autonomy of Native American teachers, as so many other writers and thinkers have done in the past. The interrogative participants in this essay’s dialogue are thus: 1) ourselves, the interior we; and 2) ourselves, the critics who function within society. We are Indigenous descendants, seeking the Indigenous. While using modes and formulations of the outsider, we indeed speak for ourselves, authentically; we attempt to transcend the dialogues that occur between us (the insider) and them (the outsider). Like others before us, we are here to challenge the contestations to Indigeneity. This means positively affirming our history; shaping our autonomy for envisioning the future; and rejecting with vigor all appropriators and falsifiers.

Specifically, this essay traces the aspects of intellectual and social Indigenous heritage that should be addressed in contemporary university curriculums. This is an ambitious consideration and if fully considered would entail an even more ambitious project than presented here. In this essay, my focus is selective and related largely to perceptions. The scale of the matter stems from the historical and sociological depth and breadth of the subject, the “vastness” of Native American peoples. In fact, what is being addressed when we consider the Indian question is a historical civilization that continues to exist in the present with all the complexities of any other civilization, including those of gender and sexuality. The task is as urgent as the subject is vast. Yet the task is hindered by the pervasiveness of Aborigenism and the persistent falsifying of Indigenism – ideological patterns deeply rooted in the history of the European West.

Confessions

One would think that educated people would learn to appreciate the Indigenous by immersing themselves in the sources through which the Indigenous wholly or partially represent themselves. Yet most writers discussing the European occupation of North America emphatically announce that there are few Native American sources, i.e., few witnesses. We need only consider certain sources to see that this is not the case; and we need to learn to distinguish among the different sources, European and Indigenous alike.

European sources are telling. For decades, aptly named “Conquista” writings have been a staple in “Spanish” departments in United States colleges. What these sixteenth century chronicles offer is a triumphalist history riddled with literary justifications. As fine historical examples of colonialist pathology, they now show up in comparative literature programs. Upon examination, what is clear are the politics these writings convey to undergraduate students slated to become teachers and administrators. All the pathology of Aborigenism is contained in the substantive or tentative assertions of the writings of a slaver, Columbus (Diario), who served his apprenticeship as “discoverer” and grand admiral by learning the seagoing slave trade.⁶ As Columbus prays, the Indigenous merit, desire, and appreciate servitude. To be sure, Columbus’ own writings reveal a grandiose and avaricious man, a less than competent sailor and commander, and an enthusiastic ideologue for Europe, monarchy, and popery. In his perspective, the aggressor/invader/ colonizer acts for altruism, while the victim/defender/colonized acts criminally. There are politics to be learned here.

A particularly egregious example of the foundations of Aborigenism is the canonical status of Hernán Cortés’ self-serving writings, Carta de Relación.⁷ Indeed, Cortés left a literary heritage alongside his political and social legacies. Like other founding “lieutenant colonialists” who sought to maintain their office vis-à-vis temperamental supervisors, Cortés faced two challenges: 1) to affirm his own superiority while simultaneously affirming the superiority of his superiors; and 2) to affirm the willingness of Native Americans to be both emancipated and subjugated by the European invaders. As it happened, Native Americans steadfastly declined such an invitation and condition. Thus Cortés, an unabashed colonialist, dwelled repeatedly on invented Indigenous qualities, and in passing rationalized that Indians were worthy enemies and hence appropriate subjects. Invariably, colonialists assure you that the colonial is a worthy subject who is best dealt with as an object. Indeed, European ends demand that Indian actions validate European triumphalism.

From the start, Cortés boldly sought to establish Moctezuma’s willingness to be a vassal, a compliant vassal that Cortés could deliver to his superiors. According to Cortés’ representation, the best sign of this willingness was Moctezuma’s alleged “donation” of Mexico as a “free gift” “given” to the Europeans. In order to comply with European definitions, Cortés designated this state as a “kingdom” or an “empire,” with Moctezuma acting as a “king” who, like other “kings,” could give his possessions away.

According to the needs of Renaissance statecraft, states mattered, nations and peoplehood did not. Thus Cortés could claim to triply subdue an empire: receive one and offer one, and along the way introduce a whole series of misrepresentations of Aztec governance to serve his, and later, colonialist propaganda.

These Cortés/European-biased characterizations of the meeting of Europe and Native America represent to this day the majority of printed literature on the subject of “the discovery” and “the encounter.” To the chagrin of some, the skeptical English scholar J. H. Elliott has delighted in underscoring the implausibility of Moctezuma, an Aztec leader, willingly donating the Aztec confederation to the unknown ruler of a distant and unknown political entity – especially given Aztec history, civic structure, or group characteristics.⁸ But even as sarcastic historians recognize that many “donations” in European history are fabrications, they must also recognize the political purpose and context of the fabrications – and hence their “realness.” Cortés fabricated his place and legitimacy by appropriating the Quetzalcoatl history and alleging that this powerful Indigenous lesson sanctioned European violence.

There are more than certain literary circumstances to be appreciated in the “conquest” literature of Europeans. Cortés modestly claimed to be only a translator – for God and a whole continent of people. He wrote his reports to benefit himself by unabashedly courting the favor of Charles V, the Hapsburg ruler of Europe, emperor of a constellation of entities and king of particularly important ones. We note that today immigrant and/or bilingual Indian children are sometimes denigrated intellectually by the accusation that they have no language. Let us recall that the one person in sixteenth century history who spoke only his own language, nearly unintelligible to others, was Charles V. His agents made Indians and their children learn the language of dominance, but Indian languages as well as symbols persist, while Charles’ are arcane.

The verbal information that Cortés received in his dealings with the Aztecs allegedly came through not one but two interpreters, a male European servant and a female Native American servant. In the process of translation, these servants added their own biases to the ample biases of Cortés; Cortés added further biases in retranslating; and Charles, or his advisors, further distorted the communication. Through the labyrinths of translation, then, Europeans invented an America to suit themselves and constructed an imaginary Indian compliance.

Cortés was clearly motivated by self-aggrandizement, whether grudgingly accepting the Aztecs as somewhat familiar Moors, or disparaging them as barbarians, i.e., non-Europeans. Cortés’ point was that Europeans have or should enjoy tutelage over them if only because of state superiority. As Voltaire snickered, Charles’ political realm was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, but rather a mafiosi inheritance gained by hook and by crook, the imagined claim of one usurper, Charles. Yet “translated,” this bag of goods was indeed a European political entity. In fact, for Charles, there was no “Spain,” politically or legally, nor would there be for two more centuries; there would be no claim to the higher loyalties of the Hapsburg subjects and their later descendants, because neither he nor they shared them. In the sixteenth century, the loyalties of imperial henchmen ascended in order from lord to overlord to capo di tutti i capi. They were gangsters who rationalized and translated their gangsterism. A fine example is Cortés’ personal secretary, F. López de Gomar, who invented his share of lies about the Indigenous – thereby proving a twentieth century propagandist saw that the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.⁹ Not only a henchman but also a blasphemer, F. López de Gomar fabricated the lie that Indians believed the invaders were gods, which explains, no doubt, why the invaders were killed (Historia de la Conquista). No Indian would mistake Cortés the ruthless for Quetzalcoatl the moralist. Thus we learn about the importance of lies in the construction of domination. We may also learn of the interpretive impoverishment effected by premeditated absences and lacunae. Except in the records of priests and later the Inquisition, there was no reporting on expressions of gender and sexuality other than leers. The scope of Indian gender and sexual relations was beyond the gangster’s ken – what they understood was concubinage and rape.

During the European invasion of Mesoamerica there was no narrative produced by Europeans with so much as a claim to objectivity; there is none today. The “great encounters” representation fiction turned to myth. Inspired by simplistic fictions and Medieval and Renaissance storytelling, Cortés, like other authorities, knowingly wrote fiction. As a multi-part, multi-authored novel, Cortés’ writings present Aztecs in the context of European melodrama. Yet Cortés’ version and justifications, his genre and agenda, remain current in the history of the European encounter, and nearly all the textbooks used in university classes today continue to present Cortés’ version. We understand today that Cortés’ actions on behalf of Europe were nothing less than a military invasion, a continuation of the European cultural heritage of endemic warfare. Yet one of the European’s preferred accusations against Indians was that these recalcitrant others, who refused to be liberated, were violent. Here the victims of violence are conjured as violent. Cortés, like Columbus before him, was inspired by the so-called Crusader’s aggressions against Muslims and Muslim lands – aggressions which, according to the writings of European participants, included the slaughtering of natives and, lo and behold, the eating of human flesh.

Amoral Moralizing

Throughout recorded time, charges of cannibalism have frequently appeared in writings on encounters between peoples.¹⁰ Although some depictions are quite embellished and imaginative, factual reports do exist of white humans eating other humans, including instances during the invasion of the Americas, such as during the 1528 Pánfilo de Narvaez expedition (Álvaro Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragio).¹¹ Yet Europeans, whether crusaders or historians, have conveniently and repeatedly set aside their own documented past on the subject; instead, they have launched a steady barrage of allegations of cannibalism among Native Americans – despite the near absence of credible first person accounts of this behavior.

Images of cannibalism are embedded in human ritualistic constructions and sexualized longings, specifically evident in Judeo Christian legacies. The cultural, economic, and sexual are neatly bundled within the charge of cannibalism. Alleged practitioners are of course subhuman, which means of course that they, their kin, and their property are fair game for the civilized. Literally and figuratively, as colonialism spreads, Europeans devour the natives. Yet from the beginning, Europeans targeted Indians as cannibals; Indians were left to atone and compensate. The allegations of cannibalistic practice among Native Americans created a universally endorsed cultural stigma and served as evidence of a fundamental inferiority that prima facie underscores the superiority and rationality of Europeans.

The charge of cannibalism is often linked to ritual killings or to the sacrifice of humans in religious rites. It is worth noting that there are no credible historical European eyewitness accounts of ritual killings among Indians. The European sensitivity to this issue is understandable given their own extensive familiarity with ritual murder – whether from their Bible, their Roman heritage of mass spectacle killings, their attachment to public executions, their obsession with warfare, or their extensive practice of religious and ethnic persecution culminating in the torture and death of alleged apostates, nonbelievers, or minority others by the score, or by the millions. Such is the history of European descendants.

Juan Gómez-Quiñones, born in Parral, Chihuahua, and raised in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, is a Professor of History at UCLA, where he has taught since 1974. One of the foremost Chicano historians and scholars in the U.S., he counts among his major works: Mexican American Labor: 1790-1990; The Roots of Chicano Politics: 1600-1940; Chicano Politics: 1940-1990; and 5th and Grande Vista (poetry). He is also the founding senior co-editor of Aztlán/International Journal of Chicano Studies Research, co-founder of the Chicano Studies programs at UCLA and CSU at San Diego, and a co-lead editor of El Plan de Santa Barbara. The footnotes are to be found in the book. 

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The Unforgiving - Santo Domingo

By Ernesto Uribe

Prologue August 1917

“You sure that’s the place?” Still gasping from the climb, the stocky American pointed to a shack at the base of the opposite slope of the hill they had just scaled.

 “Si, mi sargento, this is where our informant said the man is hiding,” the guardia corporal confirmed with a nod.

The American sergeant gave the hurry-up clenched fist hand signal to the men in his patrol as they clambered up the wooded hillside and slid into position along the opposite ridge. Once all were in place, he sat on a tree stump and pulled a sweat-stained pigskin pouch from his hip pocket, scooped a bowlful of tobacco into his corncob pipe, and studied the lone hut and surroundings.

A dangling bell followed the lethargic grazing of a single cow feeding on short grass just beyond the flimsy shack. Scrawny chickens scurried after bugs in the yard, and a pair of unattended nanny goats nibbled thorny bushes along the edge of the clearing hacked out for subsistence farming. It was a pastoral scene that begged not to be disturbed.

The sergeant struck a match on the buckle of his cartridge belt and lit the tamped tobacco in his pipe. He could see no visible guerrilla signs. No posted guards, no staked out horses, no saddles hanging under the shade trees, no rifles leaning against the shack wall by the doorway.

The only person the guardias could see from the ridge was a campesino woman washing clothes in a wooden tub. She stopped the sloshing and rubbing of rags on a scrub board long enough to scold a naked toddler playing roughly with a scrawny little dog in the patio. The American sergeant was close enough to see the woman’s nagging expression turn to a smile when the child ignored her threats and continued pestering the playful puppy. She rubbed sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, slapped another soapy rag onto the wooden scrub board and went on with her washing.

“Don’t see any men down there.” The hefty American whispered with the pipe stem clenched between his teeth.

“It’s siesta time, jefe. He is probably sleeping in the hut.” The Dominican corporal gave the ruddy-faced sergeant a sly smile.

“Bueno, then you better get three men to cover that trail yonder, by the creek,” the American pointed to a path directly behind the hut, “and let’s you and me set up right over there in the bushes, just below the crest of this hill.”

At the other end of the clearing and out of sight of where the guardia patrol was setting up, a lone peasant farmer chopped weeds in his cornfield. He squinted up at the sun and noted it was almost noon. Leaning on his hoe, he took a minute to reflect. It always gave him a wonderful feeling to see the tiny bean plants sprouting between the corn stalks. Beyond the cornfield, his green-leafed tobacco plants grew tall and healthy, and it looked as if this year his forty-two cacao trees would give the largest crop ever. He was indeed a happy man with a good wife and three healthy children who would soon be helping in the fields. Things were finally looking up for Gregorio Garcia.

The corporal crawled to where the American lay prone behind the thick trunk of a downed tree. “Private Gomez just saw movement in the hut, sargento.”

“You sure the bandido is in that shack?”

“Si, mi sargento, he has to be in there.”

“Bueno, tell the men not to shoot until I give the command. ¿Entiende?” The American aimed his rifle at the dark hole that was the only entrance to the split-bamboo hut. He would now have the patrol wait until they could see who would step out of the shack.

Garcia’s six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter had awakened from their nap and were playing a game with a string and two long sticks inside the little house. When the children pointed the play-sticks out the doorway, a panicky guardia soldier mistook the round broomsticks for rifle barrels aimed at the hillside and opened fire.

That single shot from the nervous guardia’s rifle started a fusillade that riddled the flimsy shack with bullets that killed the boy instantly. It was only by some miracle that the little girl remained unharmed as a barrage of bullets pierced the bamboo walls and struck all around the frightened child.

The wooden washtub splintered to pieces as flying bullets caused it to exploded right in front of the surprised woman.  Terrified, she dropped the rag in her hand, and in a single movement scooped up her child and ran toward the woods beyond the hut.

“Don’t let anyone escape!” the sergeant yelled and shot the woman square between her shoulder blades as she ran. Both mother and toddler were raked by an onslaught of bullets before they could reach the safety of the forest. Fuming, because his men had not waited for his order to shoot, the American stood and ordered the patrol to advance immediately down the slope.

With rifles at a ready, the Dominican soldiers rushed down the steep hill and assaulted the hut in the military manner taught them by their American sergeant.

The first guardia to rush inside the shack immediately stuck his head back out the doorway, “Only two kids in here, sargento. Boy and a girl.”

“Bring’em out, let’s see them.” The American had followed behind his men at a safe distance and waited until the hut was secured before he waddled out into the clearing.

“Boy’s dead. The girl doesn’t seem to be hurt.” The guardia private said.

“Then bring the girl out and torch the shack.” The sergeant yelled.

“You want me to drag the boy out before we burn it?”

“Hell no, burn the son of a whore.” The sergeant took a peek inside the hut and saw the twisted body of a small boy splayed on the dirt floor. “One less little bastard to grow up to bear arms against us. Now, do as I say, and burn the goddamned shack!”

Gregorio Garcia dropped his hoe and started running toward the commotion at the first sound of gunfire. As he rushed around a bend in the woods, he saw his home engulfed in flames and guardias standing over his fallen wife and baby. His tiny daughter was on hands and knees, staring blankly at the burning shack with the fear-filled eyes and open mouth that cried the silent cry of a child in shock.

When they saw the frenzied farmer running toward them, several guardias quickly grabbed Garcia and wrestled him to the ground before he could reach his family.

“Oye, sargento,” the corporal said, “this man is not the bandit we are looking for.”

“What do you mean, this is not the bandit?” Anger flushed the rotund sergeant’s greasy face. “It has to be him.”

“No señor, this man is no bandit. He is Gregorio Garcia, a simple campesino. I know him. I was just not aware he was farming out here in these woods.”

“Well, then maybe this son of a bitch will tell us where the bandidos are.” The American lifted Gregorio to his feet by his shirt collar. “All right, you! Where are your guerrilla friends?” He smashed him in the face with a clenched fist. “Tell me before I kill you, you stupid bastard.”

When Garcia saw the fury in the eyes of this foreigner, he was certain he had fallen into the hands of Satan himself, for this raging man staring at him had one eye that was dark brown, while his other eye was watery blue.  He remembered once seeing a dog with different colored eyes, but never a man.

Garcia turned to where his wife lay on the ground clutching her child, and saw his daughter still down on her knees paralyzed with fear. He sensed his son was in the burning shack and wanted to get him out. He struggled to break loose, but the guardias held him with an iron grip. He tasted the blood that was trickling down his throat from his smashed nose and gave the foreign sergeant a look as if he wanted to whisper something to him. As the American approached, Gregorio spat in his face.

“God damn you, you stinking campesino son of a bitch,” the sergeant yelled in English and wiped the bloody spittle from his face with his shirt sleeve. He balled his fists and again struck Garcia with all his strength. He kept beating on him until the holding guardias let him drop to the ground and all started kicking him.

Only the strength of a half-crazed man allowed Garcia to break loose from his assailants and dash to where his wife and baby lay. He fell to his knees beside their lifeless bodies; mesmerized, he watched the crimson pool expand beneath the woman who still clung to her dead child. As he reached out to them, he was struck repeatedly with rifle butts. Before he lost consciousness, Garcia noticed the large globe-and-anchor brass insignia on the foreign sergeant’s olive-green hat. He would remember this.

Ernesto Uribe served as a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer in seven different Latin American countries; he experienced no less than eight coups d’etat, some bloody and some nonviolent. He currently lives in Northern Virginia where he dedicates his time to writing fiction. His first novel, Tlalcoyote, published in 2001, evolved from the tale of a legendary Tejano hero in the 1800s. His second novel, Rumors of a Coup, was featured in Somos en escrito this past November.

A New Democratic Press

Extract from News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media

By Juan González and Joseph Torres

We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us …From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented.

                                         “Freedom’s Journal,” March 16th, 1827

A heavy snow was falling that frigid morning in December of 1823 when the merchant ship Draper unloaded three weary political refugees from Spain at the dock in bustling New York harbor. As the new arrivals stepped gingerly down the icy gang plank, their leader Félix Varela—a slender, thirty-five year-old, bespectacled Cuban Catholic priest—suddenly slipped and stumbled. Only the quick action of a young disciple who had been waiting at the dock to greet them saved him from a nasty fall. “I’m holding up what Spain couldn’t,” the nimble disciple whispered as he steadied the fugitive priest.

A few weeks later, Varela, who was notorious in his homeland as an opponent of slavery and an advocate of Cuban liberty, moved to Philadelphia and began publishing a small pro-independence newspaper. He called it El Habanero, and his followers began smuggling copies onto ships bound for Cuba, then distributing it throughout the island.¹

El Habanero was not the first Hispanic newspaper in the United States, but Varela was undoubtedly the most influential Latino journalist of the early nineteenth century, rivaled in his accomplishments only by fellow Cuban José Martí and Mexican-Americans Francisco Ramírez and Carlos Padilla toward the end of the century. All four embodied in their work the close connection between two distinct newspaper traditions—the Latin American and the North American—which have existed side-by-side in the New World since the early days of European colonialism.

Shortly after Varela settled in New York, a group of free black residents of that city started organizing their own response to the deplorable racist coverage of the city’s black community by white newspaper editors like Mordechai Noah and James Watson Webb. John Brown Russwurm, born to a white father and a black mother in Jamaica, and a recent graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, and the Rev. Samuel Cornish, the pastor of 64 rebel voices New York’s First Colored Presbyterian Church, gathered in late 1826 with a group of friends at 129 Leonard St., the home of M. Boston Crummell, one of the city’s most prominent African-Americans.

Those who gathered at Crummell’s house that day all agreed it was time for the black community to create its own newspaper, to challenge the endless stream of racial stereotypes in the white press. They chose dentist Thomas Jennings as chair of the stockholders’ group for the new publication, and they appointed Cornish and Russwurm its editors. Backing for the new enterprise soon came from all over the northeast. David Walker, head of the Massachusetts General Colored Council and future author of David Walker’s Appeal, volunteered to be an agent for the paper in Boston. Pennsylvania’s Stephen Smith, a wealthy black lumber merchant and financier of the Underground Railroad, offered to donate money, and Thomas Hale of the New York Manumission Society recruited support from fellow white abolitionists.

Russwurm and Cornish began publishing Freedom’s Journal, America’s first black-owned newspaper, on March 16th, 1827. In its wake, some thirty black-owned papers would appear in the northern states in the period before the Civil War, while more than 1,100 would be published during the latter half of the nineteenth century.²

The same year that black leaders met to plan the launch of Freedom’s Journal, a young Cherokee schoolteacher embarked on a speaking and fundraising tour among church and philanthropic groups in the northeastern United States. His name was Elias Boudinot, and on May 26th, 1826 he delivered an eloquent sermon at the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on the paper he had been assigned to edit by the Cherokee Nation’s tribal council in Georgia. The new publication, Boudinot said, would reflect “the feelings, dispositions, improvements and prospects of the Indians; their traditions, their true character, as it once was, as it is now.” It would seek to “create much interest in the American Community, favorable to the aborigines, and to have a powerful influence on the advancement of the Indians themselves.”³ He then asked the congregation for its support.

Boudinot published the inaugural issue of the Cherokee Phoenix on February 21, 1828. The first Native American newspaper in history was a four-page weekly written in both English and Cherokee. Despite bitter opposition from white Georgians who were constantly encroaching into Cherokee territory, the Phoenix managed to appear regularly for the next six years.⁴

Thus, in the short period between 1824 and 1828, three of America’s pioneer publications by people of color, El Habanero, Freedom’s Journal, and the Cherokee Phoenix, quietly came into existence. They arose even as Jacksonian Democrats were methodically starting hundreds of partisan newspapers throughout the United States to help capture the presidency for their leader. The founding editors of the three publications did not know each other, though all had the same goal: to give voice to the moral and political struggle of a people who had long been denied their rights.

Few Americans realize that people of color published more than one hundred newspapers in this country before the Civil War. This new press, unlike the white-owned commercial publications of that era, or the foreign language newspapers of the early European immigrants, or even the early radical labor newspapers, was forged in direct opposition to racism and colonial conquest. From the beginning, it spoke to its readers in Spanish and Cherokee as well as English, and later in Shawnee, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as well—in so many different languages that its overall character as a separate wing of our nation’s dissident press has not always been completely apparent. To the general public, even to most journalists and scholars, this portion of what is commonly called the “ethnic press” remained virtually invisible for generation after generation.

“That so many Negro newspapers were coming and going for 120 years on the mass of land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Mexico and Canada is itself remarkable,” note journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in a recent account of the press and the southern Civil Rights movement. “More extraordinary is that white people did not know about it.”⁵

The white population’s ignorance of this new press did not diminish its profound impact on the individual communities it served, nor did it erase the moral challenge those pioneering newspapers posed to the white press. Despite very distinct origins in different regions of the country, the papers of each group displayed a remarkable common purpose. Not that all of those editors spoke with a unified voice on major issues: there was a substantial diversity of outlooks between them, even racial or ethnic bias exhibited at times from the editors of one group toward another. The Phoenix, for example, carried several articles filled with racist stereotypes about blacks. Likewise, several prominent nineteenth-century Hispanic editors firmly supported slavery, such as José Agustín Quintero, editor of El Ranchero, a San Antonio newspaper of the 1850s.

Conflicts that reflected class, race and political allegiances frequently developed between editors within the same ethnic group, as evinced by the polemics between Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney in the 1840s over the best way to abolish slavery, the bitter debates over Cuban independence in the 1850s between white Cuban Cirilo Villaverde, editor of New York’s La Verdad, and Afro-Cuban Carlos de Collins, editor of that city’s El Mulato, or between Robert Abbott of the Chicago Defender and Robert Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier over the Amos ’n’ Andy controversy in the 1930s, or the dueling views of borderland Mexican editors over the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s.

Despite such differences, early editors of color generally shared common views, faced common obstacles, and challenged a reigning newspaper narrative that was deeply imbued with Anglo white bias. In the process, they promoted reasoned debate over sensationalism and hyperbole in news coverage, they opposed a centralized and commercially driven news media system, and they persistently pleaded for the news media to adopt a more responsible social role in relation to the public. They were also more skeptical of America’s territorial expansion and more critical of our nation’s imperial rise than the dominant white press. In January 1848, for example, Frederick Douglass wrote a scathing denunciation in his North Star of the “disgraceful, cruel and iniquitous war” with Mexico.⁶  

The Early Spanish Press in America  

Traditional histories of the US press have long claimed that German immigrants were responsible for the bulk of the nation’s foreign-language newspapers before the Civil War, but virtually all of those accounts have failed to note that at least eighty Spanish-language papers were started before 1860 in what is now the United States.

That such a robust Hispanic press even existed can be attributed to several factors: a long print and newspaper tradition in Latin America that was distinct from that of the Anglo-Saxon press; the geographic proximity of Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico, the main countries from which early Latino journalists migrated; and the reality that a large portion of the settler population of the American west and southwest was Spanish-speaking before those areas were annexed into the nation.

We often forget that the first printing press in the New World was introduced into Mexico, not the British colonies. In 1534, less than two decades after Cortés and his band of conquistadores vanquished the Aztec empire, a Spaniard named Esteban Martín founded a printing business in Mexico City. No copies of Martín’s work survive, but those produced by the second printer in Mexico are well-known. Juan Pablos, an Italian type composer who worked for Juan Cromberger, the German owner of a major publishing house in the Spanish city of Seville, migrated to Mexico City five years after Martín. It was from the Cromberger enterprise that the first known American news sheet, or hoja volante, was produced in 1542. Titled Relacion del Espantable Terremoto, it gave an account of the destruction of the City of Guatemala on September 10th and 11th, 1541 by an earthquake and storm.⁷

That news sheet pre-dated many produced in Europe and was issued some eighty years before the first English news-sheet or coranto appeared. 

A second pioneering center of New World publishing was Lima. At least thirteen hojas volantes produced there between 1623 and 1640 are said to be preserved in the National Library of Paris. By comparison, printing did not even begin in the English colonies until Harvard University installed a press in 1638.⁸

In 1693, only a few years after Benjamin Harris launched his Publick Occurrences in Boston, the first news periodical in Latin America, Mercurio Volante, was founded by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, a scientist at the University of Mexico, while La Gaceta de Mexico, the first newspaper to be regularly printed in Spain’s New World empire, began operation on January 1, 1722, just eighteen years after Campbell’s Boston News-Letter.

The modern United States thus became the meeting ground for two distinct printing and newspaper traditions. The main one, of course, came from England. It took root in Boston with Benjamin Harris and John Campbell, branched out through the Thirteen Colonies, and spread westward as white settlements expanded. The second and less well-known tradition originated in Spain, took root in Mexico City with Juan Pablos and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, spreading northward with the early Spanish and Mexican settlers into Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and California. This second tradition, as we will see next, soon spawned a new dissident Latino press within the US.

This excerpt is from News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, Copyright © Belén González and Joseph Torres 2011 and published by Verso Books. Reprinted here with permission. The numbers in superscript indicate footnotes to be found in the book.

Juan González is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for commentary and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is the co-host of the nationally syndicated TV and radio show Democracy Now! and is a staff columnist for New York’s Daily News. His previous books include Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America; Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse; and Roll Down Your Window: Stories from a Forgotten America.  

Joseph Torres is the senior advisor for government and external affairs for Free Press, the national media reform organization. Before joining Free Press, he worked as deputy director at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was a journalist for several years. He lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Ü  The Culture of Equality: The Premise of the Culture 

Extract from the book: Fourth World  Indigenous Woman:  Symbol for the Sixth Sun

By Juan Hernández

These  excerpts provide the basic ideology that supported the evolution of the ancient Mexican culture of equality – the culture decimated by the Conquest but resonating today as many contemporary societies struggle with realizing equality and freedom. The book examines how this was achieved in the ancient civilization through education, meditation, mastery of self and the arts, authenticity, and sacrifice.

Religious conviction and its philosophy completely saturated the ancient Mexican way of life and provided its cosmovision—examining the heavens, finding meaning in celestial events, and relating human experience and spirituality to what is observed (Austin and Lujan, 2001, 242-248). The ancient philosophers of México - the elders, the teachers of the Aztecs, the Mexica—spoke in poetic metaphors, saying creation was possible only through a union of opposites; they expressed this concept in such paradoxes as burning water, flowering stone, smoking mirror, serpent woman, feathered serpent.

These terms were applied to the various aspects of the Mexican god, Ometéotl (León-Portilla, 1962, xxiv)—the old Two God who existed below, above, and beyond the center of the universe, ruling over Omeyócan, the Region of Duality. As the ultimate creative force from whom everything flowed, Ometéotl engendered four previous cosmic and epochal struggles out of which emerged all that was necessary for sustaining life in the current Fifth Sun (Vaillant, 1968, 177-190).

Ometéotl, the Celestial Duality, was the eternal God who was simultaneously female and male, feminine and masculine; and existing separately as Ometecuhtli, Two Lord, and Omecíhuatl, Two Lady, they perpetually created themselves, the universe, life, and finally human beings. Human beings were to participate with them, the Lord and Lady of Duality, in the continuing creation of the universe and in forestalling the cataclysmic destruction of the current world by ennobling acts of sacrifice. And the loftiest sacrifice was of the most precious jewel: a center, a heart, a life. In the universe, the place of sacrifice was the Earth, Anáhuac, the green seed in a water droplet resting on the palm of Ometéotl.

On Earth, this great drama was experienced in the lifelong struggle for authenticity of individuals and a people; it was enacted at the summits of pyramids where supreme sacrifices were made, where life and death were confronted, where creation and destruction were fused. Ometéotl was the furnace of creation and was represented in the heavens as the Sun and on Earth as Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire, who was enshrined in every home by a perpetual fire in the hearth. Home and family were sanctified and bound to a burning or creative power beyond earthly concerns and beyond humankind (Burland, 1980, 88).

The elders and the philosophers of the Mexica also taught that human beings were a union of opposites—life and death, body and soul—and said that the principle function of human beings in life was the creative act. Such an act was possible only by freeing the creative spark imprisoned in matter, in their brains, in their bodies; and human beings must, thus, engage the “blossoming war,” the inner struggle for liberating themselves, the inner struggle for self-knowledge leading to their becoming authentic persons able to create and to sacrifice. Human beings were freed ultimately in death when the creative spark returned to its divine source. They said a person’s body in this dream world blossomed into a soul while being transposed to heaven.

Through this concept of creation and life - burning water, atl-tlachinolli, the union of opposites to create—they generated the ultimate premise of the culture: the godhead without gender but who was expressed as a double godhead both masculine and feminine. The elders and philosophers evolved from this premise a culture of equality. In this way, they described the heart and soul of the Mexican, everything comprising what was Mexican.

Upon burning water, the Mexica built a colossal spiritual edifice supported by an exact science, which produced the most nearly perfect calendar, gleaming cities, great pyramids, imposing art, one of the world’s great civilizations, and an illustrious people. And pervasive to all was the male Creator God Ometecuhtli, existing with his opposite, the female Creator Goddess Omecíhuatl. Then, through their aspects as their own double-aspected offspring called the Tezcatlipocas, they created everything. As Quetzalcóatl, Feathered Serpent Lord of Life, and as Cihuacóatl, Serpent Woman Lady of Life, they created human beings (Séjourné, 1960, 94).

Mind-boggling as it might seem, the Mexica religious worldview was monotheistic. Omecíhuatl, Lady of Life, was also Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of Death. United with Ometecuhtli and her four offspring, she was Coatlicue, Mother Earth, the womb of life, and Mother Famine, the tomb of hunger. As Huitzilopochtli, she was born a warrior, Chimalma. As Goddess of Fertility, she was Tlazoltéotl, Goddess of Filth and Eater of Feces, the Hearer of Confessions and the Expiator of Sins. Vast, powerful, ubiquitous, she united opposites within Ometecuhtli. He was one yet many. She was near yet far away. He was life and death. She gave life but took it. He was mother and sons. She was father and daughters. They were husband and wife. He was one and two persons. She was four and five persons. They were in the thirteen heavens and in the nine hells (Steiner, 1970, 344).

This duality, this complexity, was expressed in all aspects of Mexican existence, of being and becoming. Even the great city Tenochtítlan had its twin in Tlatelolco, where the principal market was located. The city was founded “at the center” where two stones rose above two caves filled with water, and the Templo Mayor was constructed there and bore two temples on its summit, which was the ritual Place of Duality, Omeyócan.

Náhuatl words and sentence structure were a maze of double meanings (the word náhua means double or disguise). This capacity for duality created an equitable culture, providing a special status for women not found elsewhere in the world of human cultures. This capacity created a dichotomous religious system: one supremely refined and intellectual and humane, the other mystically militaristic and cruelly destructive of human life.

This apparent contradiction lived united in the Mexican experience without confusion, because the Mexica did not deny the shadow of human personality but brought it forward so that it could be confronted consciously, and because the Mexica knew the godly aspects were but expressions of the same and singular deity (Broda, et al., 1987, 102 and 104).

The ancient Mexican created a double religious philosophy and a double religious institution. At the time of the Conquest, the Mexica were on the edge of a new creativity and a new society— now lost forever. In anticipation of the Sixth Sun, the priests and priestesses, the elders, and the philosophers were debating from opposite perspectives: the perspective of Quetzalcóatl, spirituality and wisdom, womanly inner strength, and the perspective of Huitzilopochtli, conquest and sacrifice, manly external power (León-Portilla, 1969, 58). It was a matter of religious and philosophical conviction that Quetzalcóatl would prevail even though Huitzilopochtli had to be defended.

So powerful was this conviction of Quetzalcóatl’s return that the First Speaker of the World, just prior to Cortés’s arrival and the Conquest that followed, sent emissaries to find Aztlan, the homeland, and Coatlicue, mother of the gods, who would resolve the matter—to find and consult oracles for their prophecy about the impending surrender of Huitzilopochtli to Quetzalcóatl and the end of the Fifth Sun.

Some might argue that the juxtaposition of female and male aspects of God was merely rhetorical or a difrasismo, a means of explaining fully a thought or event. The depictions of the array of gods usually contain the feminine aspects (Aveni, 1980, 155; Díaz and Rodgers, 1993), and that was not so casual. One cannot apply difrasismo and assert absolute ideological fear at the same time. Carrasco (2000) convincingly developed a theme concerning Mexica conviction about the end of the Fifth Sun so profound that they did not simply believe but feared.

In fact, Sahagún recorded that surviving Mexica reported that fear to inquiring friars during the Conquest. There are great stories to recount or create about the monumental struggles—personal, societal, and spiritual—of leaders like Tlacaélel, Motecuhzoma Xocoyótzin, Netzahualcóyotl, and Tecayehuátzin as they faced the return of Quetzalcóatl to triumph over Huitzilopochtli— their fears, conflicts, desperation, anguish.

It is important to emphasize the nature of the Mexica godhead because it denotes the fundamental concept that shaped Mexica culture. The Codex Borgia illustrated in picture-writing the duality and complexity in the godhead.

Juan Hernández, a native of Watts, California, worked as a social worker and administrator after graduating with a Master’s from the University of Southern California then in 1972 began a 30-year academic career at California State University, Sacramento. Fourth World took a long time evolving, the author says, but “the destructive and appalling national policy and practices against the undocumented Latino stimulated me” to create the book: “The concepts deriving from the ancient culture are powerful and can be used to organize around issues.” For copies: contact: http://fourthworldwoman.com/content.html.

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La Cultura de la Igualdad: La Premisa de la Cultura

Extracto del libro: La Mujer Indígena del Cuarto Mundo - Símbolo del Sexto Sol

Por Juan Hernández

El siguiente extracto presenta la ideología básica que respaldó la evolución de la antigua cultura de igualdad mexicana: una cultura diezmada por la Conquista, pero que todavía resuena, dado que las sociedades contemporáneas siguen luchando para alcanzar la igualdad y la libertad. El libro explora cómo se lograron estas metas en la civilización antigua, mediante educación, meditación, dominio del propio ser y de las artes, autenticidad, y sacrificio.

La convicción religiosa y su filosofía saturaron por completo el estilo de vida mexicano antiguo y ofrecieron su cosmovisión: a través del estudio de los cielos, el descubrimiento de significados en los sucesos celestiales y la relación de la experiencia humana y la espiritualidad con lo que se observaba (Austin y Luján, 2001, 242-248). Los antiguos filósofos mexicanos – los ancianos, los maestros de los aztecas y los mexicas – hablaban con metáforas poéticas y afirmaban que la creación fue posible sólo mediante la unión de los opuestos. Expresaron este concepto en paradojas como el agua quemada, la piedra floreciente, el espejo humeante la mujer serpiente y la serpiente emplumada.

Estos términos se aplicaron a los diversos aspectos del dios mexicano Ometéotl (León-Portilla, 1962, xxiv), el antiguo Dios de la Dualidad que existía debajo, por encima y más allá del centro del universo y que gobernaba Omeyócan, el Lugar de la Dualidad. Ometéotl, como la principal fuerza creadora de la cual emanaba todo, suscitó cuatro luchas cósmicas memorables que dieron origen a todo lo necesario para sustentar la vida en el Quinto Sol actual (Vaillant, 1968, 177-190).

Ometéotl, la Dualidad Celestial, era el Dios eterno que, al mismo tiempo, era hombre y mujer, femenino y masculino; de forma independiente, como Ometecuhtli, el Señor Dos, y Omecíhuatl, la Señora Dos, se creaban permanentemente a sí mismos, al universo, a la vida y, finalmente, los seres humanos. Los seres humanos debían participar junto a ellos, el Señor y la Señora de la Dualidad, en la continua creación del universo y la prevención de la violenta destrucción del mundo actual al enaltecer actos de sacrificio. Y el sacrificio más noble era el de la joya más preciada: un centro, un corazón, una vida. En el universo, el lugar para el sacrificio era la Tierra, Anáhuac, la semilla verde dentro de una gota de agua que descansa en la palma de Ometéotl.

En la Tierra, esta gran tragedia se experimentaba en la lucha permanente por la autenticidad de los individuos y de un pueblo; era representada en las cimas de las pirámides donde se realizaban los sacrificios supremos, donde la vida y la muerte se enfrentaban, donde se fusionaban la creación y la destrucción.  Ometéotl era el horno de la creación y era representado en el cielo como el Sol y en la Tierra como Xiuhtecuhtli, Señor del Fuego, venerado en todos los hogares con un fuego perpetuo en la chimenea. La familia y el hogar estaban santificados y destinados a un poder abrasador o creativo que superaba las preocupaciones terrenales y la humanidad (Burland, 1980, 88).

Los ancianos y los filósofos de los mexicas también enseñaban que los seres humanos eran una unión de opuestos (vida y muerte, cuerpo y alma) y decían que la principal función de los seres humanos en la vida era el acto creativo. Este acto sólo podía realizarse liberando la chispa creativa presa en la materia, el cerebro, el cuerpo, y, por ende, los seres humanos deben desarrollar la “guerra floreciente”, la lucha interna por la liberación y el conocimiento de sí mismos para convertirse en personas auténticas capaces de crear y sacrificar. Los seres humanos eran finalmente liberados después de su muerte, cuando la chispa creativa regresaba a su fuente divina. Afirmaban que el cuerpo de una persona en este mundo onírico florecía hasta convertirse en un alma mientras era transportada al cielo.

A través del concepto de creación y vida –agua quemada, atl-tlachinolli, la unión de los opuestos para la creación– generaron la premisa fundamental de la cultura: la divinidad sin género, expresada como un dios dual, tanto masculino como femenino. Los ancianos y los filósofos desarrollaron a partir de esta premisa una cultura de igualdad. Así, describieron el corazón y el alma de los mexicanos, todo lo que constituía lo mexicano. Sobre el agua quemada, los mexicas construyeron un gigante edificio espiritual respaldado por una ciencia exacta, que produjo el calendario casi más perfecto, las ciudades más relucientes, pirámides grandiosas, arte imponente, una de las civilizaciones más importantes del mundo y un pueblo ilustre.

El Dios Creador masculino Ometecuhtli, junto con su opuesto, la Diosa Creadora femenina Omecihuatl, eran omnipresentes. Luego, con el aspecto de sus propios hijos de doble apariencia, llamados Tezcatlipocas, crearon todo. Al igual que Quetzalcóatl, el Señor de la Vida Serpiente Emplumada, y como Cihuacóatl, la Señora de la Vida Mujer Serpiente, crearon a los seres humanos (Séjourné, 1960, 94).

Por más asombroso que pueda parecer, la visión completa de la religión de los mexicas era monoteísta. Omecíhuatl, la Señora de la Vida, también era Mictlantecuhtli, el Señor de la Muerte. Junto a Ometecuhtli y sus cuatro hijos, ella era Coatlicue, la Madre Tierra, el vientre de la vida, y la Madre Hambre, el vientre del hambre. Como Huitzilopochtli, era una guerrera de nacimiento, Chimalma. Como Tlazoltéotl, era la Diosa de la Fertilidad, la Diosa de la Suciedad que se alimenta de excrementos, la Oyente de Confesiones y la Purificadora de Pecados.   Vasta, poderosa, omnipresente, unía los opuestos dentro de Ometecuhtli.

Él era uno, pero también muchos. Ella estaba cerca, pero también lejos. Él era la vida y la muerte. Ella daba la vida pero también la quitaba. Él era madre e hijos. Ella era padre e hijas. Ellos eran marido y mujer. Él era una y dos personas. Ella era cuatro y cinco personas. Se encontraban en el decimotercer cielo y en los nueve infiernos (Steiner, 1970, 344).

Esta dualidad, esta complejidad, estaba expresada en todos los aspectos de la existencia mexicana, de ser y convertirse. Incluso la importante ciudad de Tenochtitlán tuvo su par en Tlatelolco, donde se encontraba el mercado principal. La ciudad se fundó “en el centro”, donde dos piedras se erguían sobre dos cuevas llenas de agua. Allí se construyó el Templo Mayor que sostenía en su cima dos templos que representaban el Lugar de la Dualidad ritual, Omeyócan.

Las palabras y las estructuras del náhuatl eran un laberinto de dobles sentidos (la palabra náhua significa doble u ocultar). La capacidad para la dualidad creó una cultura equitativa, brindó a las mujeres una condición especial que no se encuentra en ninguna otra cultura humana del mundo. Esta capacidad produjo un sistema religioso dicótomo: Uno, sumamente refinado, intelectual y humano; otro, místicamente militarista y cruel destructor de la vida humana. Esta aparente contradicción existió en la experiencia mexicana sin ninguna confusión, porque los mexicas no negaban la sombra de la personalidad humana, sino que la promovían para poder confrontarla conscientemente y porque sabían que los aspectos divinos eran sólo expresiones de la misma singular deidad (Broda, et al., 1987, 102 y 104).

Los mexicanos antiguos crearon una filosofía religiosa y una institución religiosa dobles.  En el momento de la conquista, los mexicas se encontraban en el umbral de una nueva creatividad y una nueva sociedad, ahora perdida para siempre. Con anticipación al Sexto Sol, los sacerdotes y las sacerdotisas, los ancianos y los filósofos debatían desde perspectivas opuestas: la perspectiva de Quetzalcóatl, espiritualidad y sabiduría, fuerza interior femenina, y la perspectiva de Huitzilopochtli, conquista y sacrificio, el poder exterior masculino (León-Portilla, 1969, 58).

Era un asunto de convicción religiosa y filosófica que Quetzalcóatl prevaleciera a pesar de que Huitzilopochtli debía ser defendido. Tan poderosa fue la convicción del regreso de Quetzalcóatl que el Primer Orador del Mundo, antes de la llegada de Cortés y de la posterior conquista, envió emisarios en búsqueda de Aztlan, la tierra natal, y Coatlicue, la madre de los dioses, que resolverían el asunto, y les pidió que consulten a oráculos sobre su profecía de la inminente rendición de Huitzilopochtli a Quetzalcóatl y del fin del Quinto Sol.

Algunos afirmarán que la yuxtaposición de los aspectos femeninos y masculinos de Dios eran sólo retóricos o un difrasismo, una forma de explicar plenamente un pensamiento o un suceso. En general, las representaciones de los diversos dioses incluyen los aspectos femeninos (Aveni, 1980, 155; Díaz y Rodgers, 1993), lo que no es tan fortuito. No se puede aplicar el difrasismo y, al mismo tiempo, afirmar el miedo ideológico absoluto. Carrasco (2000) desarrolló de forma convincente un tema que establece que la convicción mexica sobre el fin del Quinto Sol era tan profunda que no sólo la creían, sino que le temían.

De hecho, Sahagún documentó que sobrevivientes mexicas informaron este miedo a los frailes durante la conquista. Hay grandes historias para contar o crear sobre las colosales luchas personales, sociales y espirituales de líderes como Tlacaélel, Motecuhzoma Xocoyótzin, Netzahualcóyotl y Tecayehuátzin que enfrentaron con el triunfo de Quetzalcóatl sobre Huitzilopochtli, sus miedos, conflictos, desesperación y angustia.

Cabe destacar la naturaleza de la divinidad mexica, dado que denota el concepto fundamental que da forma a la cultura mexicana. El Códice Borgia ilustró pictográficamente la dualidad y la complejidad.

Juan Hernández, nacido en Watts, California, se desarrolló como administrador y trabajador social después de obtener su Maestría en University of Southern California. Luego, en 1972, inició una carrera académica que duraría 30 años en California State University, en Sacramento. “Me tomó mucho tiempo desarrollar Fourth World (Cuarto Mundo)”, expresa el autor, pero “la atrocidad de las destructivas prácticas y políticas nacionales contra los latinos indocumentados me estimularon” para escribir el libro: “Los conceptos derivados de la cultura antigua son poderosos y se pueden utilizar para organizarse frente a los problemas”. Para solicitar una copia, diríjase al sitio:http://fourthworldwoman.com/content.html.