like the tiger,
with his phantom body?
When the oaks see him,
when people see him,
they say in a whisper
one to the other:
“Look, brother, here comes
the ghost of Caupolicán.”
(42)
1558: Michmaloyan The Tzitzimes
They have caught and are punishing Juan Tetón, Indian preacher of the village of Michmaloyan in the Valley of Mexico, and also those who listened and paid heed to him. Juan was going about announcing the last days of an era and the proximity of a year to end all years. At that point, he said, total darkness would fall, the verdure would dry up, and there would be hunger. All who failed to wash baptism out of their hair would turn into animals. Tzitzimes, terrifying black birds, would descend from the sky and eat everyone who had not washed off the mark of the priests.
The tzitzimes had also been announced by Martín Océlotl, who was captured and beaten, dispossessed and banished from Texcoco. He, too, said that there would be no flame at the festival of new fire and the world would end because of those who had forgotten the teachings of the fathers and grandfathers and no longer knew to whom they owed birth and growth. The tzitzimes will fall upon us through the darkness, he said, and devour women and men. According to Martín Océlotl, the missionary friars are tzitzimes in disguise, enemies of all happiness, who don’t know that we are born to die and that after death we will have neither pleasure nor joy.
And the old lords who survive in Tlaxcala also have something to say about the priests: Poor things, they say. Poor things. They must be sick or crazy. At noon, at midnight, and at the dawn hour, when everyone rejoices, they shout and cry. They must have something terribly wrong with them. They are men without any sense. They seek neither pleasure nor happiness, but sadness and loneliness.
(109)
1558: Yuste Who Am I? What Have I Been?
Breathing is a violent effort, and his head is on fire. His feet, swollen with gout, will no longer walk. Stretched out on the terrace, he who was monarch of half the world is in flight from his jesters and contemplates the dusk in this Estremaduran valley. The sun is departing beyond the purple mountains, and its last rays redden the shadows over the Jeronomite convent.
He has entered many a city as a conqueror. He has been acclaimed and hated. Many have given their lives for him; the lives of many more have been taken in his name. After forty years of traveling and fighting, the highest prisoner of his own empire wants to rest and be forgotten. Who am I, what have I been? In the mirror he has seen death entering. The deceiver or the deceived?
Between battles, by the light of campfires, he has signed more than four hundred loan agreements with German, Genoese, and Flemish bankers, and the galleons have never brought enough silver and gold from America. He who so loved music has heard more of the thundering of guns and horses than sacred lute melodies; and at the end of so much war his son, Philip, will inherit a bankrupt empire.
Through the fog, from the north, Charles had arrived in Spain when he was seventeen, followed by his entourage of Flemish merchants and German bankers, in an endless caravan of wagons and horses. At the time he could not even say good-morning in the language of Castile. But tomorrow he will choose it to say goodbye.
“Oh, Jesus!” will be his last words.
(41 and 116)
1559: Mexico City
The Mourners
The eagle of the Austrias opens his golden wings against the clear sky of the Mexican plateau. On a black cloth, surrounded by flags, glitters the crown. The catafalque renders homage to Charles V and also to death, which has conquered so invincible a monarch.
The crown, an exact replica of the one that adorned the emperor in Europe, has toured the streets of Mexico. On a damask cushion it was borne in procession. The multitude prayed and chanted behind it while the bells of all the churches rang out the death toll. The chief nobles paraded on horseback in mourning, black brocades, black velvet cloaks embroidered with gold and silver; and beneath a canopy, the archbishop, the bishops, and their spectacular miters broke through clouds of incense.
For several nights the tailors have not slept. The entire colony is dressed in mourning.
In the slums, the Aztecs are in mourning, too. They have been for months, nearly a year. The plague is exterminating them wholesale. A fever never known before the conquest draws blood from the nose and eyes and kills.
(28)
Advice of the Old Aztec Wise Men
Now that you see with your eyes,
take notice.
See how it is here: there is no joy,
there is no happiness.
Here on earth is the place of many tears,
the place where breath gives up
and where are known so well
depression and bitterness.
An obsidian wind blows and swoops
over us.
The earth is the place of painful joy,
of joy that pricks.
But even though it were thus,
though it were true that suffering is all,
even if things were thus on the earth,
must we always go with fear?
must we forever tremble?
must we live forever weeping?
So that we may not always go with groans,
so that sadness may not ever saturate us,
Our Father has given us
smiles, dreams, food,
our strength,
and finally
the act of love,
which sows people.
(110)
1560: Huexotzingo The Reward
The native chiefs of Huexotzingo now bear the names of their new lords. They are called Felipe de Mendoza, Hernando de Meneses, Miguel de Alvarado, Diego de Chaves, or Mateo de la Corona. But they write in their own Náhuatl and in that language send a long letter to the king of Spain: Unfortunates we, your poor vassals of Huexotzingo …
They explain to Philip II that they cannot reach him in any othc way, because they don’t have the price of the journey, and they tell their story by letter. How shall we speak? Who will speak for us? Unfortunates we.
They never made war on the Spaniards. They walked twenty leagues to Hernán Cortès and embraced him, fed him, served him, and took charge of his sick soldiers. They gave him men and arms and timber to build the brigantines that assaulted Tenochtitlán. After the Aztec capital fell, the Huexotzingans fought with Cortés in the conquest of Michoacán, Jalisco, Colhuacan, Pánuco, Oaxaca, Tehuantepec; and Guatemala. Many died. And afterward, when they told us to break the stones and burn the carvings that we worshiped, we did it, and destroyed our temples … Whatever they ordered, we obeyed.