Monday, June 30, 2008

Mi amor, mi chingador ... te conoceré en el infierno

Four hundred eighty-eight years ago today Cuitláhuac led the Aztecs against Hernán Cortés and his Spanish merceneries, driving them out of Tenochtítlan.
Cuitláhuac was dead of small pox within a few months. (Bioterrorism was created by the Western man.)

Cortés had been greeted by the Aztecs as a god. They believed him to be an incarnation of Huitzilopochtli, god of war and patron of Mexico. This was because Cortés' lover la Malinche told him how to act in order to best the Aztecs. and so Cortés ended up lucky in love and money.
According to legend, Malinche was sold into slavery by her Aztec mother after her mom remarried and wished to leave her land to children by her 2nd marriage. (Aztec inheritance was matrilineal). Malinche was in the way and so she was placed on the auction block.

She passed through many tribes and ended up translating for Cortés because she knew so many languages. He was a conquistador thousands of miles from his wife, so he lived up to his name and conquered Malinche and with her help (the Spanish never would have succeeded without her) he conquered the Aztecs.

According to other legends, Malinche had several children by Cortés and when he left Malinche in order to return to Spain and his European family, she was so heartbroken that she drowned her children and herself.
Malinche was doomed by all of the gods in all of the heavens of all of the religions to search the earth for the souls of her children and not to return to the gates of heaven until she finds them. Her dead children of course, are hiding from her, seeing as she drowned them. So she tears at her hair and she keens and moans in her grief and that cry will turn your blood to ice in your veins and because of that cry, the ghost of Malinche is called La Llorona.

And to this day La Llorona snatches little children from the shore and drowns them. Perhaps she mistakes them for her own, she has been searching so long. Perhaps, she hopes to trick the gatekeepers and sneak into heaven with someone else's child.

Today, in Mexican spanish, a malinche is an unforgivable traitor. and La Llorona is a folk song and a cautionary tale used by parents to warn children away from the water.
Today, Tenochtitlan is el D.F. (Distrito Federal) or Mexico City as we call it in english-speaking countries. The city's residents speak spanish, not nuahtl.

The wheel turns.



9 comments:

JoeC said...

Damn fascinating. Always heard Cortez was believed to be a god, but it makes a lot more sense now with the inside knowledge given by Malinche. It's so cool how grains of truth grow into legends and then are use for practical purposes like keeping kids away from the water before they can swim...great post!

Pelmo said...

Wasn't this about tighter border security?

Joe you and the sardine like to make mountains out of mole hills with your stories.

La Sirena said...

Hey Joe -- thanks! I may explore this one more, because I also find it interesting how one cruel mother selling a daughter into slavery (supposedly) effects the course of history so profoundly. Talk about the butterfly effect.

Pelmo -- I think maybe the Aztecs and Mayas should have devised tighter border security. You're probably right!

JoeC said...

Yep, if the Aztecs had only built their fences a bit higher, that would have solved a lot of their problems, and we'd have more cool ruins to visit today ;-)

Hey, Pelmo...that comment about the mole hills reminds me of a religious cartoon I saw recently...it was called "Things Jesus Didn't Say" and it had a drawing of Jesus saying, "If you only had faith the size of a grain of mustard, you could turn mountains into molehills." There's much wisdom in mangled Bible verses! ;-)

JBoombostick said...

Thats pretty cool thank you for educating me! You are smart for a girl ;)

Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines said...

Check out the song "Cortez The Killer" by Neil Young. On either "Zuma" or one of the greatest hits packages. Excellence!

La Sirena said...

Joe -- That's right on...

Bos -- I am pretty smart for a girl, or a woman, I guess. Why don't you blog anymore?

Nigel -- I'm listening to the version from "Rust" right now, great song! I'm thinking about picking up some Neil Young at the local snobby used music store. It'll give me:
a. something to complain about (snotty clerks)
b. cheap, "green" thrills (in the form of used CDS)

c. secret cool points with myKid, who is very into Neil Young recently

changapeluda said...

chillz, amiga!

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