Guest post by Nathalie Bléser, part five in a series of 5
In the Aztec palace, I, Cortés’s lengua, became the bridge between him and Moctezuma. Our Emperor wanted to learn more about the strangers, and he relied on me for that matter. At first I believed in dialogue and I hoped to play a part in the peaceful encounter of two worlds, but soon I learned that what the strangers said and what they did were two different things… I believed what they taught me about their god’s son, Yeshua. But like the Mexicas, they were no longer following the rules of their own peaceful leader from a remote past… Every night I closed my eyes and saw those who perished during the conflict, and my heart sank deeper and deeper into a sea of guilt. Now I have forgiven myself, like I have forgiven the strangers, those who brought destruction through me and took both my children away from me. My Martín, Cortés’s son, was symbolically turned into nothingness, la nada, which rhymes with la chingada, when his father’s official wife gave birth to a son they named like mine. My little María, from another Spaniard imposed upon me as a husband, was also brought up lejos de mí, far from me. It seems that in the eyes of those people I was not good enough to raise my own… I guess the strangers were afraid I would “contaminate” my babies with my Indigenous ways.
They wanted to turn them into good Spanish prototypes despite their mixed blood. They wanted to showcase them in their land beyond the great water to suggest that conquest could also be won through ‘blood building’ instead of ‘blood spilling’. It hurt me to the core to know that my son fought in a war, in Granada, Spain, which was not his and was intended to subdue and expel people who fought to preserve what was left of their hybridized culture. I felt that my son was fighting his own brothers. I never wanted the death of my culture! I wanted the end of meaningless deaths. I engendered life, new lives, new bloods, and new hopes for a future which would embrace our differences, like a gem corn cob honors each and every one of its kernels. But through me death came too and I endangered it all. Engender / Endanger, what a cruel sound proximity.
Was I in love with Cortés? Let me answer with another question. Do you know many women in love with their rapists? I was far from being his only Indigenous “lover”. He also sired a child with Moctezuma’s daughter, Tecuichpoch Ixcaxochitzin. Her beautiful indigenous name means Cotton Flake, but she was baptized Isabel by the Spaniards. They say she rejected Leonor, the child product of her rape by Cortés, although you never know what to believe with those strangers… I believe they took that daughter from her, like they did with my children. When I wondered about the feelings of my little ones, I always thought of Leonor’s as well. I felt that she would engender new worlds too. Maybe I somehow knew that the husband of Leonor’s daughter would come to conquer what you call New Mexico. His name was Juan de Oñate…
But back to the one who sired my first child. At first I was grateful that Cortés showed consideration, but then I understood that he had only used me for my language skills, indigenous knowledge and mere womanhood. It did not, does not, and will never make me hate men though. My true love exists, but in those days he reached our shores a bit late, when our fate was already sealed. Like me, my love fulfilled the prophecies and engendered children with another race than his, contributing to adding hues to the rainbow of our humanity, honoring the existence of the four-colored Tezcatlipocas. All I could do then was to dream about him, and his face was not always the same. Sometimes I dreamed of him as the aspect of Quetzalcóatl that embraces shadow, although I never fully understood what that dream meant. Maybe that’s part of what mi pluma lengua, the woman who writes for me today, saw in the lattice of that ceiling…
I liked seeing her wolf outfit that night of the Monday Writers, because “lobo” is one of the names Spaniards gave to my love’s offspring… He followed his instinct and went in search of our Paradise where our Origins are, and I lost his track for some time in the Labyrinth of our Soul-itude. But today I remember. Today I know who we are, and we are willing and ready to make the dream come true, because it is time, and because now our soul has learned. It is only one soul, one and only soul, coiled like a plumed serpent in the embrace of an eternal kiss: that of the sun and the moon, artistically intertwined on many New Mexican art forms, just like the word ‘woman’ is made of ‘man’ and… ‘woo’. On the spiral of eternity, genders cross back and forth the gate between ‘me’ and ‘we’, looking at each other in the mirror of their eyes and in the mirror of their letters, like your Monday Writers…
From the heart of Lake Texcoco, from the Navel of the Moon aka Old Mexico, I came to salute this Land of the New Sun, my, our, your Sixth Sun. Its four-season flag proudly shines on my Soul. Its seal honors the eagle that flew southward and held a serpent in its beak while standing en un corazón de tuna, the heart-shaped leaf of a prickly pear cactus. Why do people keep saying it’s a sign of Eagle’s superiority over Snake? Can’t they see it’s yet another image of our Plumed Serpent that unites above and below? After all, the motto of New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”, refers to a thunderbolt moving through the sky… It was taken from a poem called On the Nature of Things. But few people still take time to dig down to the roots to build their sense of place. They say the bigger eagle above represents the country that cut its border line on the throat of the map giant that straddles what are now two countries. What I see is the Great Eagle that led our ancestors from Aztlán to the Navel of the Moon… Under this ever-changing moon, me, Cotton Flake and many other Indigenous women nurtured the seeds that started a garden of diversity; we made it bloom in many hues. Unlike those who felt the need to trace back and classify all the details of our mixed bloods in complicated Cuadros de Castas, I do not wish to draw grids between people and imprison them in the narrow cells of their color or ethnicity. The only frame where I would gladly draw a grid would be that of the earth, to build a “waffle garden”.
I know mi pluma lengua smiled the first time she heard that name, which reminded her of a Belgian dessert. Through the psyche of mi pluma lengua I came to this land to ask Plume writers to weave beautiful stories that teach empathy and cherish our diversity. Do you know there’s a caterpillar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9hMFID5GIk that mimics a bird feather to deceive its predators? It takes on the appearance of an essential aspect of birds to have a right to exist, and enough time to transform into a beautiful butterfly after displaying Patience, Endurance and Determination.
I am feeling mi pluma lengua; she remembers that day when writer Alejandro Morales gave her one of his plumes… He had taught her the power of a Chicano literature chiseled by the plumes of who “wielded the tool of their enemies”, such as the English language that would write their stories. Today I wish to nuance the label used by my children’s children’s children. The only true enemy is the one that resides within oneself. Once we acknowledge our shadow and use it to project, on the screen of our souls, the future transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, we will have conquered our divisions. This will be the green light for us to build, together, the rainbow world I once envisioned. Like a bifid translator, like a Quetzalcóatl worshiper, please, dear Plume writers, every time you put pen to paper, remember to slip your ‘snake selves’ under the skin of your heart, remember to feel and then make others feel emotions through your words. May the light of my spirit inspire you, and may you smile every time you write under a moonlit sky. Writing will set us free.
Con Amor, Malina, through Moctzuna (*).
(*) This is the nickname my true love and I wanted to give to our pluma lengua, when we observed her from above, as she sat at the center of the four corners of herself, letting the feather caterpillars slowly take her back to her own heart. I, Malina, the language lover, reshaped the initials of the four states around her. From NM-CO-UT-AZ, into “Moctzuna” I turned her. I like the sound of Moctzuna.”
The End (…of an Era, leading to a New Beginning)