Stubbing Your Toe on History in Mexico

You can’t walk a single block in this city without stubbing your toe on History.

I pass a bakery and spot an Aztec calendar hanging on the wall of the shop. It displays an image of a five-hundred-year-old Aztec prince holding a dying woman in his arms. History.

Whenever I encounter a person or a street named after a Famous Indigenous, you know, a name with too many X’s or C’s or U’s, like Cuauhtémoc (kwou-TAY-mahk), Cuitláhuac(kwit-LA-wahk), Xiuhcoatl (ZAYA-ka-whatl), it's as if the person or street were introducing themselves to me, “Hi, I’m History.”

Indigenous tribes are really good at thinking up hard-to-say and hard-to-spell names with the letter X. It can sound like an “s” or “sh,” or “j” or even “k,” and your guess is as good as mine.

If I try to pronounce the name of this sort, my tongue tangles in my throat like I'm choking on a chicken bone. A purplish tint washes over my face in an attempt to let the name out but it never gets even close to the tip of my tongue.

Coming out of the Metro, I ran into History again. I passed an Indian beggar crouching on a blanket. She outstretched her arm and curled her withered fingers into a cup. “Una limosna, Señorita, por el amor de Dios? A little charity, for the love of God?”

The lump in my throat grew into the size of a boulder. How come Indians were begging on the streets when Mexicans seemed so proud of their indigenous history? On one hand, I had seen their hallowed Aztec stone calendar and artifacts of the Mayan ruins displayed at the National Anthropology Museum. On the other hand, my eavesdropping on stressed-out Mexican moms revealed mothers scolding their children by saying, “Don’t act Indian.” What was going on with Mexican identity? I wanted to find out.

I thought my tutor Francisco would have a clue. At my next Spanish lesson, I brought up the love/hate relationship with the Indians that I observed. “It’s a paradox, it really is, the whole Mexican identity.”

Francisco just listened intently but never said a word. He returned to correcting my trill of the Spanish “r” so I could say “rico” (delicious or rich) properly. Instead of the “r” in the roar of an engine, it sounded like he wanted me to flutter the “r” like the wings of a butterfly.

“You sound as if you’re choking on a butterfly,” he said.

“My ‘r’ really sounds like that?”

“Yeah. It’s terrible.”

“Don’t be mean. I’m trying.”

“Forget about trying. Let your tongue roll.” He tilted his head back and demonstrated. “Like this.”

“That’s a flutter if you ask me, not a roll.”

After ten minutes, Francisco suddenly asked, “Have you heard of Malinche?”

“You mean Cortés’ interpreter? The one who helped Cortés beat the Aztecs?”

“She was more than his interpreter. She was his mistress. She gave him a son, Martín.”

“Really? Wow, Mexican soap operas go back a long way.”

“Yes,” Francisco said softly as we sipped our coffee, “Martín is considered the first Mexican born of mixed blood, the first mestizo.”

“I knew Malinche was important.”

“Cortés wrote about how important she was in his letters. He said, ‘After God we owe this conquest of New Spain to Doña Marina.’”

“I suppose Mexicans will never forgive her for that.”

“Never. Many of us think of her as a traitor. That’s why when a Mexican talks bad about Mexico or acts “too foreign,” we’ll call him a malinchista.”

“You’re not considered a malinchista for tutoring a gringa, are you?”

“Of course not!” he said, his face flushing.

Was he telling me all this to appeal to my love of history? This must be an act of wooing, of the intellectual kind. An idea popped into my head. “Hey, Francisco,” I leaned toward him, “you want to help me with something?”

“I’m already helping you with something. Your Spanish.”

“Something else.”

“What?”

I edged closer to him until my nose was an inch from his nose. Sharing something very clandestine had to be shared at a proper distance.

His eyes glimmered, his ears twitched, and he whispered, “What do you need help with? Tell me. Anything.”

“Would you help me find out where Cortés and Malinche are buried? See if there are any statues or monuments of them in the city? I haven’t seen any, have you? Wouldn’t that be something to find?” My face lit up with excitement.

A flash of anger danced across his face. “What are you talking about? You crazy? You want me to help you find a 500-year-old ticking bomb of history?”

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