Me: Twenty Seconds to Immortality

[micc2]

Ruben,

I have read your comments and I could not agree with you more!

I have been involved in the Danza Azteca/Chicano indigenous  movement
since 1973.  It saddens me when I hear from and read stuff written by
18-25 year old college students, or community activists that want to
re-write what they perceive as the "European propaganda" of my
community's past. Their fanaticism is up right  there with the Osama bin
Laden's followers, the fundamentalist Christian right, and the old
Maoist shinning path...

As you state there are some people who want to use our cultural,
linguistic and spiritual legacy for the betterment of our community.
But there are a small number of
individuals who cling to the Mexican indigenous identify and Pan-Indian
movements for their own selfish and personal ends. Any logical or
reasoned debate with them is useless since they immediately attack
anyone who does not follow  their way of thinking as "vendidos" and
sell-outs...  These people use the innocence and longing of  good people
to take advantage of society in general,  the Chicano/Mexicano community
in particular.

I have even hears these "spiritual" people tell first generation
Mixteco-speaking kids that nahuatl is their REAL language, and that if
they do not learn it they can never be indigenous people!!!  Here in San
Diego County we have a large Mixteco-speaking population.  These Mixteco
kids are going form Mixteco directly into English, with never a
Castilian word getting in the way (another reason why the word "Hispanic
is useless!)

When a person who wants to re-write history and ( with so little
understanding of culture, language or spirituality) at the expense of
the other indigenous people of Mexico (such as the Otomi, Tarasco,
Mixteco, Zapoteco, Mixe-Zoque, Trique, Popoloca, Guave, Seri, Huichol,
Yoreme, Cocopa, etc) they are IN FACT  DOING THE VERY THING THEY ACCUSE
THE "ARCHEAOLOCS" OF DOING- destroying our heritage and making it into a
hollywood style charicature.

It reminds me of the times I was in Mecha in the early 1970's at San
Diego State.  At that time it was "la Liga" of marxist student majority
versus the nationalists, and the indigenists (of which I was a
partisan).  And all of us where against the "vendidos" and sell-outs...

Now that that battle was "won" by the indigenists and
psuedo-nationalists,  the tables are turned! Now we have some young guns
who, having missed out on the
fabled furor of the 60's and 70's, now they want to have something to
fight about. What they do not realize is that this battle is only
between ourselves, and that energy could be put to more constructive use.

Personally, it is more important that we help keep alive today's
indigenous languages of the world;  in living and evolving ways, not for
what was, but for what hopefully could be a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic
global village.  The number of "victims" 500 years ago means squat,
compared to how many monolingual people in the highlands of Hidalgo,
Veracruz, Chiapas, Guatemala and Ecuador are going to die of
malnutrition, or be oppressed by "their" governments.

Tlein i'toa moyollo?

mario
www.mexicayotl.org



Archaeology Institute wrote:

>Nahua language and culture discussion <NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU> writes:
>
>
>>Question:  Can you please operationalize what you mean by the "reality of the Mexica Aztec and
>>other Mesoamerican civilizations" in your final sentence?  Are you trying to reconstruct what you think was the reality of the Mexica Aztec or what exactly do you mean?  Also, how does this
>>"reality" connect with results from an experiment on a synthetic human cadever?  How can the results of this experiment and a citation from Francis Berdan - provide anyone with a credible
>>representation of the "reality of the Mexica Aztec"?  What is this reality based on - theory?
>>
>>Thanks for your response,
>>
>>citlalin xochime
>>Nahuatl Tlahtolkalli
>>
>>
>
>Citlalin Xochime,
>
>        As I am in the midst of an RTP review of a colleague, for the moment I would like to respond in brief, and by way of explanations proferred by me in a previous response to another neo-Mexica
>revisionist perspective presented in yet another list-serv context and "reality".  First, the specific "reality" that I am most interested in at the moment concerns the "neo-Mexica revisionist" (or
>neo-post-modernist Mexica-Xicano) reality that has become quite vocal, and often antagonistic to university faculty and other students who raise questions such as those raised in my earlier post of
>today.
>
>        As a professor at the California State University, Monterey Bay, where I teach such courses as "Art of the Aztec Empire" and "Ancient Maya Civilizations," I soon discovered that a number of my
>Latino, Mexicano, and Xicano students (and please do note that I count myself as a member of the Xicano reality) had adopted a polemical rhetoric often seen predominantly and exclusively among the
>more zealous members of the European and American "denial movements" that continue to proclaim such realities as that that espouses the belief that the Nazi-inspired holocaust of WWII is little more
>than a politically-motivated fiction.  The "reality" in question has become the basis for a long-term personal interest in how it is that denial movements, ethnocentricity, and nationalism often go
>hand in hand to elevate, or quash, those elements of history, art, and science that such groups see as unsavory or demeaning.
>
>        Significantly, your questions and challenges (not to mention, elements of your website) fit the frameworks of analysis that I have observed to date among those I now refer to as "neo-Mexica
>revisionists."  Please do note, however, I do not consider said position to be without merit.  In fact, if anything, consideration and analysis of those questions raised by "neo-Mexica revisionists"
>have in fact led me to more closely examine and analyze those diatribes that obtain between both proponents and detractors of the "paradise lost" vision and reality of ancient Mesoamerica.
>Ultimately, I believe that the shortcomings and failings of archaeology and ethnohistory, and the resurgence of ethnocentrically-defined movements and nationalistically inspired academic agendas,
>continue to cloud the bloody waters of human sacrifice, conflict, and warfare in the Americas and elsewhere.
>
>        One neo-Mexica revisionist, who also happens to be a personal acquaintance of mine, has taken to using his pride in his adoptive Mexica roots to teach Xicano youth about the beauty of their
>ancestors and their contributions...particularly as concerns dissuading our youth from engaging in gangland conflict and violence.  Others, on the other hand, profane the discussions by engaging in
>ad hominem attacks on any and all archaeologists and ethnohistorians who have worked to sustain Mexica Aztec studies for the better part of the past five centuries.  From Sahagun to Carrasco, they
>have been attacked as racist, or characterized as one revisionist put it, as "arqueolocos."  Ironically, while these same revisionists question the facts presented by Sahagun and others, they
>nevertheless persist in using data and cultural descriptions from these same scholars to "reconstruct" a "separate reality" of their respective heritage.  Other neo-Mexica revisionists, predominantly
>Xicano, have written poetry decrying the blasphemies of the academy regarding their ancestors, while at the same time glorifying the bloodshed and violence of street gang warfare and drive-by
>shootings.  Again, my objective here is not to denigrate, but to comprehend the very roots and affinities of the phenomenon in question.  As a scientist I suspect that you would more than fully
>understand that reality is relative!
>
>        If anything, like you, I seek to promote a forensic approach to those vestiges of the conflict in question that take many forms.  Interestingly, no matter how many questions asked, or "facts"
>interrogated, the arguments can be perpetuated indefinitely in this instance.  The following was my specific proposal to another neo-Mexica revisionist perspective brought to bear in another context
>(I will respond to other specifics latter today or tomorrow):
>
>
>        "I am in fact in agreement with your assessments.  It is precisely for said reasons that I would advocate that blood residue analysis of cult objects, including axe blades, statuary, and vessels
>(e.g., Ocelotl Cuauhxicalli), be confined to those cult objects retrieved from pre-Hispanic archaeological contexts (e.g., Leonardo Lopez Lujan, 1994).  In addition, the analysis of bone collagen in
>fact hold the potential to provenience those proteins and amino acids specific to food group sources that would assist in the identification of from whence such foods were consumed.  This was in fact
>recently done to provenience the origins of an early Copan dynast to the Northern Yucatan.  Given that the forensic analysis of bone and blood residues now holds the potential to identify human blood
>serum as old as 90,000 years BP, and that corallary analysis of amino acids and proteins will permit the identification of (ethnic) origins, I believe that in this way we can begin to assess Spanish
>contact claims pertaining to the those core issues that remain as per the question of human sacrifice.  I am particularly concerned about the inadequacy of forensic data pertinent to the following
>questions:
>
>(a)  Does there exist a body of prima facie forensic evidence to contest or support recent claims by neo-Mexica revisionists (e.g., Tlapoyawa, 2002; Mendoza, 2001; 2003) that Spanish documentation
>for the existence of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica is little more than a fabrication of Spanish conquistadores and clerics?
>
>(b) If, in fact, we can demonstrate that blood sacrifice was a matter of fact among such groups as the Mexica Aztec, do we not have access to a sufficient body of osteological evidence to specify the
>forms of blood sacrifice that may have been practiced (e.g., human heart excision, decapitation, etc.)?
>
>(c) Given both popular lore, and neo-Mexica revisionist claims that if, in fact, human sacrifice was practiced, it was only another more radical form of auto-sacrifice in which only those
>self-selecting or volunteering were given over to the gods; then can either blood residue, DNA, or bone collagen studies settle the matter of who specifically was targeted for such a divine rite?
>
>and, finally,
>
>(d) Given revisionist claims that the practice of tearing a human heart from a living, breathing, victim is not technically, or surgically, feasible with stone tools (or other more modern methods
>that require specialized instruments), how then do the Matamoros cult killings of the 1980's (wherein a single individual or cult leader accomplished the same task unassisted by attendants) provide
>an "ethnographic" analog that might in turn settle this latter question?
>
>        So, given the many questions that remain unanswered, and the many assumptions that both scholars and the lay public make about virtually every architectonic feature on the Mesoamerican landscape
>(i.e., the notion that all "altar" platforms were in essence sacrificial sites), how then can we fruitfully and effectively begin to bring resolve to the questions that continue to vex Amerindian and
>Mesoamericanist communities?  [Note: A recent AAA symposium organized by Rick Chacon, David Dye, and myself, was an effort in this direction]."
>
>        You have my preliminary response...and I look forward to more on the topic in question. To that end, I thank all who have contributed many more questions than can be resolved in this lifetime or the
>next.
>
>Ashkale Kuarma,
>
>Ruben G. Mendoza, Ph.D., Director
>Institute for Archaeological Science, Technology and Visualization
>Social and Behavioral Sciences
>California State University Monterey Bay
>100 Campus Center
>Seaside, California 93955-8001
>
>Email: archaeology_institute at csumb..edu
>Voice: 831-582-3760
>Fax: 831-582-3566
>http://archaeology.csumb.edu
>http://archaeology.csumb.edu/wireless/
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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