Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos
Authors: John Phillip Santos
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stones are still being unearthed throughout the hills and plains of southern central Mexico.
Indian mothers gave birth to the new race of Mestizos. Mestizos, literally meaning “the mixed ones,” combined the blood of the Old World and the New. Indian and Spanish, Indian and African, Indian and Asian. With the emergence of the Mestizo world, Mexico became obsessed with this mixing of the world races, finding exotic names for each racial combination. The child of the union of a white and an albino Indian was called a Saltatrás, or a “leap backward.” The child of the union of an Asian and an Indian was a Tente en el Aire, or “blowing in the wind.” The child of the union of an Indian and a Mestizo was a Coyote. There were more than fifty such names, a taxonomy of miscegenation.
It was the mothers who created Mexico Mestizo. And long before the conquest, the Mexica priests of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, had prophesied that this would be an age in which all the people of the world would mingle their blood. There are stories of the presagios, series of darkening augurs the Mexica wrestled with before the conquest, which were told to Padre Sahagún by Indians who had personally witnessed them.
Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, in the year Twelve House of the Azteca calendar, people saw fiery signs in the heavens for an entire year. Sometimes they were shaped like a spike pointed down, sometimes like a flame hanging from the middle of the midnight sky, sometimes like a tear. They said then that the sky was weeping fire.
And then the fire fell to earth.
At the Templo Mayor, in the center of Tenochtitlán, the House of Huitzilopochtli, the god who had led the Mexica on their long migration south, burst into flames and would not be extinguished.
A swift, silent bolt of lightning is said to have destroyed the temple of old Xiuhtecuhtli, one of the most primeval and revered gods of the Mexica. His temple had always been made of straw. They would say later that it was struck by the sun.
Then, one day, the sun reversed its course, streaming a tail across the sky like a comet coughing flames, rising in the west and rushing to the east, raining bright red sparks with the sound of thousands of tiny bells.
Eventually, phantasmagorical beasts and men appeared in a mystical array among the Mexica.
There was a two-headed man.
Finally, an ash-colored bird was caught in a maguey net and taken to the House of Magic Studies, so that it could be shown to the supreme ruler, the cacique, Motecuhzoma. In the crown of its head, there was a mirror that seemed to be turning like a spiral. In that mirror, Motecuhzoma first saw a pageant of all the stars in the night sky, turning around the North Star. When that scene dissolved, in the distance he saw a vision of an approaching legion, raising battle against a herd of running deer.
After the cacique had beheld the marvels that were brought before him, they are said to have disappeared before the attending priests could witness them. When they looked, they only saw themselves in the mirror. By then, Motecuhzoma had come to believe that the Aztecs, who spent so much of their lives doing rituals to keep their world from being destroyed, were now being warned their world would soon come to an end.
This, too, had been prophesied.
But of all these mystical presagios, these long-remembered premonitions of doom, the one that is most Mexican is the report that people had often heard the sound of a woman’s voice, crying, letting out great peals, and screaming in the darkness. Fretful and plaintive, they heard her speak the words,
My little children, now we must go far away!
My little children, where will I take you?
My mother’s family are Tejanos from the deep time of Nueva España, when San Antonio represented one of the northernmost outposts of civilization in the sprawling desert wilderness that reached all the way south to Querétaro, the colonial town to the
Indian mothers gave birth to the new race of Mestizos. Mestizos, literally meaning “the mixed ones,” combined the blood of the Old World and the New. Indian and Spanish, Indian and African, Indian and Asian. With the emergence of the Mestizo world, Mexico became obsessed with this mixing of the world races, finding exotic names for each racial combination. The child of the union of a white and an albino Indian was called a Saltatrás, or a “leap backward.” The child of the union of an Asian and an Indian was a Tente en el Aire, or “blowing in the wind.” The child of the union of an Indian and a Mestizo was a Coyote. There were more than fifty such names, a taxonomy of miscegenation.
It was the mothers who created Mexico Mestizo. And long before the conquest, the Mexica priests of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, had prophesied that this would be an age in which all the people of the world would mingle their blood. There are stories of the presagios, series of darkening augurs the Mexica wrestled with before the conquest, which were told to Padre Sahagún by Indians who had personally witnessed them.
Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, in the year Twelve House of the Azteca calendar, people saw fiery signs in the heavens for an entire year. Sometimes they were shaped like a spike pointed down, sometimes like a flame hanging from the middle of the midnight sky, sometimes like a tear. They said then that the sky was weeping fire.
And then the fire fell to earth.
At the Templo Mayor, in the center of Tenochtitlán, the House of Huitzilopochtli, the god who had led the Mexica on their long migration south, burst into flames and would not be extinguished.
A swift, silent bolt of lightning is said to have destroyed the temple of old Xiuhtecuhtli, one of the most primeval and revered gods of the Mexica. His temple had always been made of straw. They would say later that it was struck by the sun.
Then, one day, the sun reversed its course, streaming a tail across the sky like a comet coughing flames, rising in the west and rushing to the east, raining bright red sparks with the sound of thousands of tiny bells.
Eventually, phantasmagorical beasts and men appeared in a mystical array among the Mexica.
There was a two-headed man.
Finally, an ash-colored bird was caught in a maguey net and taken to the House of Magic Studies, so that it could be shown to the supreme ruler, the cacique, Motecuhzoma. In the crown of its head, there was a mirror that seemed to be turning like a spiral. In that mirror, Motecuhzoma first saw a pageant of all the stars in the night sky, turning around the North Star. When that scene dissolved, in the distance he saw a vision of an approaching legion, raising battle against a herd of running deer.
After the cacique had beheld the marvels that were brought before him, they are said to have disappeared before the attending priests could witness them. When they looked, they only saw themselves in the mirror. By then, Motecuhzoma had come to believe that the Aztecs, who spent so much of their lives doing rituals to keep their world from being destroyed, were now being warned their world would soon come to an end.
This, too, had been prophesied.
But of all these mystical presagios, these long-remembered premonitions of doom, the one that is most Mexican is the report that people had often heard the sound of a woman’s voice, crying, letting out great peals, and screaming in the darkness. Fretful and plaintive, they heard her speak the words,
My little children, now we must go far away!
My little children, where will I take you?
My mother’s family are Tejanos from the deep time of Nueva España, when San Antonio represented one of the northernmost outposts of civilization in the sprawling desert wilderness that reached all the way south to Querétaro, the colonial town to the
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