Return to Aztlan: Indians, Spaniards, and the Invention of Nuevo México (Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture) by Danna A. Levin Rojo

Author:Danna A. Levin Rojo [Rojo, Danna A. Levin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2014-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

These passages contain the central elements of the Aztec/Mexica migration as recounted in Nahua tradition: the place of origin, Chicomoztoc, represented by “the rough, hollow cave”; the departure at the request of a god, Huitzilopochtli (here the disguised demon); and the emblematic sign of the eagle devouring a serpent as indicative of the arrival into the Promised Land (the Valley of Mexico). Furthermore, they also contain, in a somewhat distorted form, the tree-breaking episode that marked the first schism of the Nahua migrant group in Códice Boturini and other related sources; that is, the moment when following Huitzilopochtli’s mandate, the Aztecs parted with the other Nahua groups (the eight calpoltin) and changed their name to Mexicas.13 Villagrá expresses this episode first with the demon’s instructions ordering one brother to return home, thereby enabling the other to proceed; and second with the piece of iron shaped like a turtle shell that the demon uses to indicate, marking the soil as if it were a map, the way in which the migrants had to settle the territory once they reached the Promised Land:

And because greed, clumsy vice

Of mean acquisition frequently causes

Great disagreement and conflict,

To avoid confrontation and dissent

I shall better mark the boundaries

Limits and milestones of the lands

That each of you for your own government

Should recognize without pretending

To any other domain, neither more nor less

Than what herein will be marked off.

And raising up her heels

Firmly standing on her toes

She lifted her thin yet powerful arms,

And then propelled her monstrous cargo [the load of iron],

As if it were a fierce thunderbolt

That with great terror and astonishment amazes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thus with sudden roar and noise

She released the mighty load

And as it hit the solid ground

That was left quaking, totally shaken

It broke itself to pieces that sprinkled all around

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In this same manner, plan, and mode

The mighty land they divided.14

Canto 2

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