Stubbing Your Toe on History in Mexico
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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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