Verdes, amarelas, brancas, ou cor-de-laranja; enormes ou pequeninas; lisas ou ásperas, as abóboras americanas têm um papel fundamental não só nas tradições alimentícias mas também no folclore do hemisfério. Sabemos por evidências arqueológicas que foram cultivados diversos tipos de abóboras há dezenas de séculos nos Andes e em Meso-américa, e que através do tempo as abóboras têm complementado o regime básico de feijão, milho, batatas e pimentas. Nos principais idiomas americanos de hoje, os nomes das variedades são múltiplos: pumpkin, zapallo, abobra, squash, porongo, gourd, sem esquecer os primos calabaza, cabaça, e calabash, mesmo que estes últimos não aludem ao mesmo fruto.
No folclore americano a família das abóboras é associada à origem do mundo e também ao ciclo da vida. Por exemplo, segundo a mitologia taína, Deminán era o filho de Yaya, espíritu divino. Deminán fez cair, do teto da barraca de Yaya, uma abóbora que continha os ossos do irmão mais velho dele. Quando a abóbora rompeu no chão, nasceram dela os rios, os lagos, os mares, e dos ossos do irmão nasceram todos os peixes. Com certeza as sementes da abóbora parecem peixes!
Também na cosmologia maia do povo quiché, na estória dos gêmeos heróis do Popol Vuh, a abóbora tem um papel importante como metáfora plurivalente. Um dos gêmeos utiliza uma abóbora para substituir a cabeça do irmão, morto por um morcego que lhe tirou a cabeça. (O pai deles tivera perdido a cabeça, que foi pendurada numa árvore e de onde produziu saliva-sêmen que engravidou a mãe dos gêmeos.) Com a cabeça-abóbora, os gêmeos enganaram os Senhores de Xibalbá, o Lugar dos Mortos, no jogo parecido com o futebol que era típico dos povos meso-americanos. Depois os gêmeos converteram-se na Estrela da Manhã e na Estrela da Tarde (Venus). Quer dizer que a abóbora forma um elo unindo uma série de imagens relacionadas cosmologicamente: cabeça, balão, estrela, e as épocas cíclicas do universo.
Aquilo de subsituir a cabeça por uma cabaça é um motivo repetido na célebre lenda norte-americana, escrita por Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." O fantasma do cavalheiro degolado leva uma abóbora como se fosse cabeça, a que atira e atinge no amedrentado Ichabod Crane no caminho desolado de uma noite de outono. Fica claramente implicada aqui a tradição do jack-o'-lantern, costume que praticava-se na Irlanda entalhando o nabo para fazer uma lanterna vegetal mas que, uma vez transplantada aos Estados Unidos, assumiu o rosto da abóbora.
No Brasil também abundam abóboras, e outros frutos da mesma família genérica (como o melão e a melancia), nas lendas que implicam o ciclo da vida de várias fontes indígenas (como o nascimento, de um melão, da serpente-via láctea). Segundo Câmara Cascudo, a origem da personagem da "cuca" pode ser no fato de essa palavra significar, em algumas regiões do país, a abóbora quando perfurada para desenhar olhos, nariz e boca. Neste dia de Halloween e temporada mexicana do Dia dos Mortos, fica cristalizado--naquele sorriso de caveira que tem o jack-o'-lantern--o melancólico perceber, no contexto americano, do ciclo da semeada e da colheita, da vida e da morte.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Calavera Carlos Fuentes
Calavera a la mexicana aludiendo a las obras del célebre autor
En toda la Terra Nostra,
la región más transparente,
se lamenta la noticia
del narrador que fenece.
Al que el Nóbel no le dieron--
no consultaron sus fuentes--
del jugo que iba a sacar
los sabores no aparecen.
No se reveló la causa.
La falta se hizo patente.
El origen del pretexto
sólo en sus textos se atiene.
Parece que le dio un aura--
un mal de tafeta verde--
que cuando quieres que venga,
no viene porque no quiere.
Ningún consuelo le dio
ver que esta bruja que muere
tarda más en fallecer
que él, cuando mero fallece.
Mas ahí no muere la cosa,
sino que rejuvenece:
en sus prosas y en sus cuentos
--que los lea quien se rete--
mitos, estatuas, y dioses
cobran vida nuevamente.
Tláloc, Chac Mool se confunden
las lluvias con sus papeles
y los años con los díaz.
Un cristo nonato pierde--
puesto en el trono del águila
del nuevo mundo valiente--
los cinco soles de México,
el Escorial y el retrete.
Cien fuegos arden en lo alto,
alguien en la cruz padece:
despedazado el arte alza
en medio al rico vejete.
No es lo mismo que lo mesmo,
la eutanasia que la muerte,
pero su buen gringo viejo
tampoco la muerte teme.
Eso sí, sus muchos libros,
numerosos como peces,
llegan a ser terminados
por los sabios que los leen.
Al gran final luego llegan:
que al pie del naranjo entierren
este caballero-espejo
que a la ignorancia arremete
en sus novelas y ensayos.
Que de su vida, estos queden.
Labels:
calaveras,
en español,
Mexico,
poetry,
romances
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Day of the Race
The Day of the Race or, better, Day of the People, is a pretty silly moniker for a concept both superficial and alarmingly deep.
It was October 12, 1492 that Columbus and his crew made landfall in the Bahamas. In the US this commemoration has become Columbus Day, one of those push-it-to-the-nearest-Monday holidays beloved of those people who need so much love: bankers. While the Italian-American community has appropriated the day as a celebration of national heritage, and the Hispanic-American community regards it as an appropriate closure for Hispanic Heritage Month, some US states have renamed the day "Native American Day," or let it be called both names.
In Brazil the date is widely ignored, since, as famed singer / songwriter Caetano Veloso elaborates in his memoir Tropical Truth (translated by Isabel de Sena):
But in the Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas, whose conquest and colonization were most directly linked to Columbus's meanderings financed by the Spanish monarchs, the day has taken on a polyvalence encompassing touchy subjects like nationhood, ethnicity, and race. In Mexico, especially, the day is linked to the masterfully succinct wording on this plaque at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, itself a site of incredibly mixed messages due to the 1968 massacre of Tlatelolco:
Post-revolutionary Mexico's take on re-evaluating and promoting its indigenous heritage retains its strong link to the writings of José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), philosopher, politician, and education reformer whose 1925 essay La raza cósmica exalts mestizaje, or ethnic mixing, as a Latin American essential quality with the potential to redeem the other, less mixed "races." Fraught with difficulties, imprecisions and aporiae, and even having been interpreted as inherently racist itself, the concept of the "cosmic race" nonetheless continues to affect thinking about what it means to be Latino, Latin American, Hispanic, etc. vis-a-vis the wider world; witness the name of The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States."
Curiously, though, even in Mexican official discourse the celebratory idea of the "raza" is not always mestizo. The Monumento a la Raza, on the Avenida Insurgentes not far from the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in northern Mexico City, recasts the Mesoamerican pyramid and crowns it with the cactus-perched eagle--the "sign" that the Mexica sought in order to found Tenochtitlan.
In this iconic imagery, "raza" would appear to be exclusively indigenous. The monument's construction was completed in 1940, during the heyday of indigenous re-imaginings by artists such as Rivera, Kahlo, Siqueiros, Orozco, and Tamayo.
Perhaps the best name would be "Mutual Discovery Week," with days for Africans, Native Americans, Southern Europeans, Polynesians, Northern Europeans ("Leif Erikson Day," already October 9)... But no more "bank holidays," please!
It was October 12, 1492 that Columbus and his crew made landfall in the Bahamas. In the US this commemoration has become Columbus Day, one of those push-it-to-the-nearest-Monday holidays beloved of those people who need so much love: bankers. While the Italian-American community has appropriated the day as a celebration of national heritage, and the Hispanic-American community regards it as an appropriate closure for Hispanic Heritage Month, some US states have renamed the day "Native American Day," or let it be called both names.
In Brazil the date is widely ignored, since, as famed singer / songwriter Caetano Veloso elaborates in his memoir Tropical Truth (translated by Isabel de Sena):
"As children we learned that Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvarez Cabral on April 22, 1500. All other American nations consider it enough to have been discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492" (3).
Veloso highlights this fact as the beginning of a kind of Brazilian exceptionalism, and develops it to accommodate conflicting geographies of Brazil as island, continent, and nation. The slight has also to do with frontier finagling prior to the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the rejection of Columbus's financing needs by the Portuguese king João II, whom the admiral had visited before soliciting Fernando e Isabel in Spain.
Post-revolutionary Mexico's take on re-evaluating and promoting its indigenous heritage retains its strong link to the writings of José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), philosopher, politician, and education reformer whose 1925 essay La raza cósmica exalts mestizaje, or ethnic mixing, as a Latin American essential quality with the potential to redeem the other, less mixed "races." Fraught with difficulties, imprecisions and aporiae, and even having been interpreted as inherently racist itself, the concept of the "cosmic race" nonetheless continues to affect thinking about what it means to be Latino, Latin American, Hispanic, etc. vis-a-vis the wider world; witness the name of The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States."
Curiously, though, even in Mexican official discourse the celebratory idea of the "raza" is not always mestizo. The Monumento a la Raza, on the Avenida Insurgentes not far from the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in northern Mexico City, recasts the Mesoamerican pyramid and crowns it with the cactus-perched eagle--the "sign" that the Mexica sought in order to found Tenochtitlan.
MONUMENTO A LA RAZA, AVENIDA INSURGENTES, CIUDAD DE MEXICO |
In this iconic imagery, "raza" would appear to be exclusively indigenous. The monument's construction was completed in 1940, during the heyday of indigenous re-imaginings by artists such as Rivera, Kahlo, Siqueiros, Orozco, and Tamayo.
Perhaps the best name would be "Mutual Discovery Week," with days for Africans, Native Americans, Southern Europeans, Polynesians, Northern Europeans ("Leif Erikson Day," already October 9)... But no more "bank holidays," please!
Labels:
Brazil,
iconography,
in English,
Latin America,
Mexico
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