Macaw: Creative Writing & Latin America: April 2010

Bruce Dean Willis

is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at The University of Tulsa. His research and publications focus on diverse aspects of poetry and performance, and expressions of Indigenous and African cultures, in Latin American literature, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

TIME FOR CHOCOLATE is available for purchase through One Act Play Depot! A brief description:

An intoxicating evening of music, poetry, and chocolate... in pre-conquest Mexico!
Based on a fifteenth-century dialogue among nobles schooled in rhetoric and philosophy, the play pits father against son in a war of words over the power and beauty of artistic expression.

Monday, April 26, 2010

OUTREM

O OUTRO QUE VAI FALAR SOU EU
sim, ele e eu somos um
entanto somos três
na realidade, eu sou trezentos

La Otra Que Va A Hablar Soy Yo
soy mujer mientras soy hombre,
león, mono, búho, bestiario
soy pájaro de cuatrocientas voces

The other who's going to speak am I
who made this poor translation?
it unhinges
where it should most tightly seal
but this is just enough
to let a little light in
and a little air in
through the cracks

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Texcoco

Texcoco, second city of the Aztec Triple Alliance, was a fabled center of learning and law. The city where renowned tlatoanis Nezahualcoyotl and his son Nezahualpilli reigned still exists in modern Mexico state, but it was pre-conquest and colonial Texcoco that formed the focus at the symposium last weekend at the University of North Texas, which convened international scholars of several disciplines (history, art history, literature, anthropology).

I had the good fortune to attend and serve as a session moderator. Scholarly interpretations did not always agree, but a climate of mutual respect prevailed. Among many interesting facts and interpretations that I learned, I summarize a few here, without giving the names of the presenters who illuminated me (to protect the innocent, although I am willing to provide them to a courteous inquirer):

The highest hill in Texcoco was dedicated to Tlaloc, a water and earth god and one of the oldest deities in Mesoamerica.

Although commonly thought to be a Mesoamerican Athens (to Tenochtitlan's Sparta), Texcoco may have been thoroughly dominated by Tenochtitlan through Nezahualcoyotl and his descendants. The city may have held a position as weak as that of Tlacopan, third member of the Triple Alliance, with this latter concept introduced post-conquest in an attempt to portray Texcoco as a tribute center.

Nezahualcoyotl's environmental and public works projects can allow him to be considered an enlightened precursor of today's "sustainability."

The spatial layout of "ministries" (or their equivalent) in Nezahualcoyotl's palace conforms to that of the buildings in Teotihuacan. A generalized scheme based on this matching overlay and pertaining to the cardinal directions posits the following associations:

east - red - spring - earth - Tlaloc - government

south - yellow - winter - fire - Tezcatlipoca - armed forces

west - sky blue - autumn - air - Quetzalcoatl - commerce

north - dark blue - summer - water - Chalchiutlicue - religion

Nezahualcoyotl's park at Tezcotzinco probably included a life-size relief sculpture of him in the hillside, similar to the one of Moctezuma in Chapultepec.

Discussion related to Texcocan geneaology centered on interpreting Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl's accounts of his ancestors. As early as the seventeenth century, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora had alerted his readers to Alva Ixtilxochitl's tendency to exaggerate. In his writings, Alva Ixtilxochitl portrayed both his ancestors Nezahualcoyotl and Nezahualpilli as "nigrománticos" or man-gods with supernatural powers. His younger brother Bartolomé was also a writer, who produced a Confesionario and three Nahuatl translations of Spanish Golden Age plays. Another descendant of the Texcocan tlatoanis, don Antonio Pimentel Tlahuitoltzin, was active in reasserting Texcocan royal authority. His position became one of dropping pre-conquest religion while maintaining pre-conquest politics. An elaborate family tree illustration of Nezahualcoyotl's descendants, c. 1750 in a Berlin museum, was used in at least one litigation regarding the recovery of land.

The Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas hosts a summer Nahuatl-language program in conjunction with Yale University. The intensive program includes six weeks of two-hour-a-day instruction in classical Nahuatl, two hours in modern Nahuatl, and a one-hour tutorial session. The optional seventh week includes a trip to the Huasteca region of northern Veracruz.

The symposium's interdisciplinary composition tied to its specific focus proved to be very successful, and plans for an edited volume and follow-up symposium are in the works.