-
-
---Solsticio invernal
Y cuando es la oscuridad
confiamos en los dioses
que la luz sea —
pero aun
tendremos que cantar
la luz a ser.
------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
------Winter Solstice
And when the darkness is,
we trust upon the gods
that light might be —
but still
we must sing
the light into being.
-----© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
-
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Bouquet of the season
--
-
Holly Tanka
In the cold whiteness,
scalloped green flags, red lanterns —
holly in the snow —
more festive, more lovely than
tinsel strung across the streets.
Mistletoe Tanka
Winter stripped the trees,
but, they still greenly sport leaves,
fruiting mistletoe.
In scarce winter, the birds feast
and beneath it, fairies kiss.
-
Blessings of the season in which the Winter Solstice
brings increase of light;
may it illuminate our hearts & minds
that we may heal, achieve justice, find peace
& realize the paradise
from which we have never been expelled.
brings increase of light;
may it illuminate our hearts & minds
that we may heal, achieve justice, find peace
& realize the paradise
from which we have never been expelled.
Holly TankaIn the cold whiteness,
scalloped green flags, red lanterns —
holly in the snow —
more festive, more lovely than
tinsel strung across the streets.
--------------------------------------------©Rafael Jesús González 2008
Mistletoe TankaWinter stripped the trees,
but, they still greenly sport leaves,
fruiting mistletoe.
In scarce winter, the birds feast
and beneath it, fairies kiss.
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
Flor de Noche Buena Tanka
Because it blooms at
midwinter’s holiest dark,
the friars called it
Flor de la Noche Buena,
bloom of the light-birthing night.
-
Because it blooms at
midwinter’s holiest dark,
the friars called it
Flor de la Noche Buena,
bloom of the light-birthing night.
-----------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
--
Friday, December 12, 2008
Full Moon of Winter
-
---Luna plena de invierno
La luna plena de invierno
canta con voz de oboe
en contrapunto al pizzicato
de las estrellas.
Es una fuga brillante y fría
que llena la cúpula oscura
de plata y melancolía.
---© Rafael Jesús González 2008
---- Full Moon of Winter
The full moon of winter
sings with the voice of the oboe
in counterpoint to the pizzicato
of the stars.
It is a bright & cold fugue
that fills the dark dome
with silver & melancholy.
-----© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
---Luna plena de invierno
La luna plena de invierno
canta con voz de oboe
en contrapunto al pizzicato
de las estrellas.
Es una fuga brillante y fría
que llena la cúpula oscura
de plata y melancolía.
---© Rafael Jesús González 2008
---- Full Moon of Winter
The full moon of winter
sings with the voice of the oboe
in counterpoint to the pizzicato
of the stars.
It is a bright & cold fugue
that fills the dark dome
with silver & melancholy.
-----© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
-
-
------Rezo a Tonantzin
Tonantzin
---madre de todo
---lo que de ti vive,
es, habita, mora, está;
Madre de todos los dioses
------------------las diosas
madre de todos nosotros,
-------la nube y el mar
-------la arena y el monte
-------el musgo y el árbol
-------el ácaro y la ballena.
Derramando flores
haz de mi manto un recuerdo
que jamás olvidemos que tú eres
único paraíso de nuestro vivir.
Bendita eres,
cuna de la vida, fosa de la muerte,
fuente del deleite, piedra del sufrir.
concédenos, madre, justicia,
--------concédenos, madre, la paz.
---------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
----Prayer to Tonantzin
Tonantzin
-----mother of all
-----that of you lives,
be, dwells, inhabits, is;
Mother of all the gods
---------------the goddesses
Mother of us all,
---------the cloud & the sea
---------the sand & the mountain
---------the moss & the tree
---------the mite & the whale.
Spilling flowers
make of my cloak a reminder
that we never forget that you are
the only paradise of our living.
Blessed are you,
cradle of life, grave of death,
fount of delight, rock of pain.
Grant us, mother, justice,
-------grant us, mother, peace.
--------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
anonymous, Mexico 1746
-
-
-
------Rezo a Tonantzin
Tonantzin
---madre de todo
---lo que de ti vive,
es, habita, mora, está;
Madre de todos los dioses
------------------las diosas
madre de todos nosotros,
-------la nube y el mar
-------la arena y el monte
-------el musgo y el árbol
-------el ácaro y la ballena.
Derramando flores
haz de mi manto un recuerdo
que jamás olvidemos que tú eres
único paraíso de nuestro vivir.
Bendita eres,
cuna de la vida, fosa de la muerte,
fuente del deleite, piedra del sufrir.
concédenos, madre, justicia,
--------concédenos, madre, la paz.
---------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
----Prayer to Tonantzin
Tonantzin
-----mother of all
-----that of you lives,
be, dwells, inhabits, is;
Mother of all the gods
---------------the goddesses
Mother of us all,
---------the cloud & the sea
---------the sand & the mountain
---------the moss & the tree
---------the mite & the whale.
Spilling flowers
make of my cloak a reminder
that we never forget that you are
the only paradise of our living.
Blessed are you,
cradle of life, grave of death,
fount of delight, rock of pain.
Grant us, mother, justice,
-------grant us, mother, peace.
--------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
anonymous, Mexico 1746-
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving
-
-
-----------------Grace
Thanks & blessing be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
----this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessing to them
who share it
-----(& also the absent & the dead.)
Thanks & blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
--------& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------& robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.
----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, Issue 6, Spring 2003
[nominated for the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Award];
author’s copyrights.)
-------------Gracias
Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.
---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, no. 6, primavera 2003
[nombrado para el Premio de la Poesía por la Paz Hobblestock;
derechos reservados del autor.)
-
---- -
-
-----------------Grace
Thanks & blessing be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
----this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessing to them
who share it
-----(& also the absent & the dead.)
Thanks & blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
--------& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------& robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.
----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, Issue 6, Spring 2003
[nominated for the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Award];
author’s copyrights.)
[reading and commentary http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks
for November 26, 2008]
for November 26, 2008]
-------------Gracias
Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.
---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, no. 6, primavera 2003
[nombrado para el Premio de la Poesía por la Paz Hobblestock;
derechos reservados del autor.)
[lectura y comentario http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks
del 26 noviembre 2008]
del 26 noviembre 2008]
----- -
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Full moon: Moon for Obama
-
“— the White House of future poems,” wrote the good gray poet, “and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon—.” And he sang of the vistas of Democracy in these United States and perhaps dreamt (he did not say) that one day this house he praised, built in great part by slaves from Africa, would be home to a man and his family of African descent much, much more recent than that of most of us.
For a bad long while the vision the poet sang turned nightmare, a fearful tale from the Arabian nights, the singer, lover of Lincoln, at risk of losing his head at the tale’s end, the White House fenced in and barricaded, Democracy but a sham, an empty shibboleth, profane password into the prison cell, or worse, the torture chamber, the Constitution shredded and our freedoms raped.
Tonight the soft and copious moon promises that those pale and livid walls of power will at last have some color and that Democracy is not yet dead, that our blood still flows red and rich with joy and hope of change, the love of freedom and desire for justice strong in our good will.
The moon watches, as does the world, for a turn of things, for the ray of light to blaze into full day, not an immediate paradise, but of an Earth healed, a humanity more free, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate, more hopeful, and more full of joy.
The world watches and so does godmother moon, soft and copious.
“— la Casa Blanca de poemas futuros,” escribió el buen poeta pardo, “y de sueños y dramas, allí en la suave y copiosa luna —.” Y cantó de las vistas de la Democracia en estos Estados Unidos y tal vez soñó (no dijo) que algún día esta casa que elogiaba, construida en gran parte por esclavos de África, sería hogar para un hombre y su familia de descendencia africana mucho, mucho más reciente que la nuestra de la gran parte de nosotros.
Por un mal y largo tiempo la visión que el poeta cantaba se volvió pesadilla, un cuento espantoso de las noches árabes, el cantor, amante de Lincoln, a riesgo de perder la cabeza al fin de la narrativa, la Casa Blanca cercada y barreada, la Democracia sino una farsa, un mote vacío, una contraseña a la celda de prisión, o peor, a la sala de tortura, la Constitución hecha garras y nuestras libertades violadas.
Esta noche la luna suave y copiosa promete que estos muros del poder pálidos y lívidos al fin tengan algo de color y que la democracia no está ya muerta, que nuestra sangre aun fluye roja y rica con regocijo y esperanza de cambio, el amor por la libertad y el deseo por la justicia fuertes en nuestra buena voluntad.
La luna está en mire, tal como el mundo, de un cambio de cosas, que el rayo de luz encienda en día pleno, no un paraíso inmediato, sino una Tierra sanada, una humanidad más libre, más justa, más apacible, más compasiva, de más esperanza, y de más alegría.
El mundo espera y también madrina luna, suave y copiosa.
Moon for Obama
“— the White House of future poems,” wrote the good gray poet, “and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon—.” And he sang of the vistas of Democracy in these United States and perhaps dreamt (he did not say) that one day this house he praised, built in great part by slaves from Africa, would be home to a man and his family of African descent much, much more recent than that of most of us.
For a bad long while the vision the poet sang turned nightmare, a fearful tale from the Arabian nights, the singer, lover of Lincoln, at risk of losing his head at the tale’s end, the White House fenced in and barricaded, Democracy but a sham, an empty shibboleth, profane password into the prison cell, or worse, the torture chamber, the Constitution shredded and our freedoms raped.
Tonight the soft and copious moon promises that those pale and livid walls of power will at last have some color and that Democracy is not yet dead, that our blood still flows red and rich with joy and hope of change, the love of freedom and desire for justice strong in our good will.
The moon watches, as does the world, for a turn of things, for the ray of light to blaze into full day, not an immediate paradise, but of an Earth healed, a humanity more free, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate, more hopeful, and more full of joy.
The world watches and so does godmother moon, soft and copious.
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
Luna para Obama
Luna para Obama
“— la Casa Blanca de poemas futuros,” escribió el buen poeta pardo, “y de sueños y dramas, allí en la suave y copiosa luna —.” Y cantó de las vistas de la Democracia en estos Estados Unidos y tal vez soñó (no dijo) que algún día esta casa que elogiaba, construida en gran parte por esclavos de África, sería hogar para un hombre y su familia de descendencia africana mucho, mucho más reciente que la nuestra de la gran parte de nosotros.
Por un mal y largo tiempo la visión que el poeta cantaba se volvió pesadilla, un cuento espantoso de las noches árabes, el cantor, amante de Lincoln, a riesgo de perder la cabeza al fin de la narrativa, la Casa Blanca cercada y barreada, la Democracia sino una farsa, un mote vacío, una contraseña a la celda de prisión, o peor, a la sala de tortura, la Constitución hecha garras y nuestras libertades violadas.
Esta noche la luna suave y copiosa promete que estos muros del poder pálidos y lívidos al fin tengan algo de color y que la democracia no está ya muerta, que nuestra sangre aun fluye roja y rica con regocijo y esperanza de cambio, el amor por la libertad y el deseo por la justicia fuertes en nuestra buena voluntad.
La luna está en mire, tal como el mundo, de un cambio de cosas, que el rayo de luz encienda en día pleno, no un paraíso inmediato, sino una Tierra sanada, una humanidad más libre, más justa, más apacible, más compasiva, de más esperanza, y de más alegría.
El mundo espera y también madrina luna, suave y copiosa.
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
-
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
invitation to a reading in Berkeley
-
You are invited to
THE MUSIC OF THE WORD - LA PALABRA MUSICAL
hosted by Avotcja & Eric Aviles
featuring
Rafael Jesús González
&
Karla Brundage
Sunday November 23, 2008
3:30 PM
REBECCA's BOOKS
3268 Adeline Street
(½ block north of Alcatraz,
2 short blocks south of Ashby BART)
Berkeley, California
(510) 852 - 4768
rebeccasbooks@yahoo.com or www.Avotcja.com
ericaviles@yahoo.com or laverdadmusical@yahoo.com
“Let the music of your heart enhance the freedom that you seek”
-
THE MUSIC OF THE WORD - LA PALABRA MUSICAL
hosted by Avotcja & Eric Aviles
featuring
Rafael Jesús González
&
Karla Brundage
Sunday November 23, 2008
3:30 PM
REBECCA's BOOKS
3268 Adeline Street
(½ block north of Alcatraz,
2 short blocks south of Ashby BART)
Berkeley, California
(510) 852 - 4768
rebeccasbooks@yahoo.com or www.Avotcja.com
ericaviles@yahoo.com or laverdadmusical@yahoo.com
“Let the music of your heart enhance the freedom that you seek”
Veterans' Day
-
-
When the First World War officially ended June 28, 1919, the actual fighting had already stopped the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the previous year. Armistice Day, as it was known, later became a national holiday, and in 1954 (the year I graduated from high school), the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans of all wars.
The only veteran of that war, “the war to end all wars”, I ever knew was my father’s step-father Benjamín Armijo, from New Mexico, an old man who seldom spoke and whom I would on occasion see wearing his cap of The American Legion. (He was also Republican.)
“The war to end all wars” was anything but that and when I was not much more than five, three of my uncles on my mother’s side (Roberto, Armando, Enrique) went off to fight another war, the Second World War.
I missed my uncles and remembered them by their photos on my grandmother’s home altar, very handsome in their uniforms; in the endless rosaries and litanies the women in the family regularly met to pray; and in the three blue stars that hanged in the window.
My uncle Roberto, tío Beto, did not last his second year; he came home and ulcers and los nervios, nerves, were mentioned. My uncle Armando, tío Pana, in the Infantry division or the Cavalry Division (though not one horse was ever ridden into battle in that war), served in the Pacific Theater, and Guadalcanal is a name that in some way sticks in his history. My uncle Enrique, tío Kiki, the youngest, in the Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles,” served in the European Theater and parachuted into the taking of Germany.
After that war ended, they came home, tío Pana into a hospital, sick with malaria which affected him throughout the rest of his life; tío Kiki with a malady in the soul not so easily diagnosed, hidden in his quiet humor, gentle ways. All my uncles were gentle men, in all senses of the word. And Beto, Pana, Kiki spoke not at all about their experiences of war in spite of my curiosity and questions which they diverted with a little joke or change of subject. What they had seen, felt was apparently not to be spoken and the family sensed this and respected their reticence. Neither of them joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars that I ever knew.
The Korean War “broke out”, as they say, as if it were acne, not long after. But as for me, I have never fought in any war, though I joined the U. S. Navy upon graduating from El Paso High School to become a Hospital Corpsman and obtain the G.I. Bill with which to enter Pre-Med studies upon my discharge; two of four years in the Navy I spent in the Marine Corps with the rank of Staff Sergeant. The Korean War had already ended. And though I served closely enough to it to be given the Korea Defense Service Medal and am legally a veteran and eligible to join the VFW, I never did nor do I intend to.
If I consider myself veteran of any war, it would be of the Viet-Nam War, not because I fought in it, far from it, but because I struggled against it. (I counseled conscientious objectors, picketed recruiting offices, marched in the streets.) The war veterans I have most intimately known are from that war, many, if not most, wounded and ill in body (from bullets, shrapnel, agent-orange), wounded and ill in the soul (terror, guilt, shame, hatred putrefying their dreams, tainting their loves.)
I am leery of being asked to honor veterans of almost any war, except as I honor the suffering, the being of every man or woman who ever lived. I am sick of “patriotism” behind which so many scoundrels hide. I am sick of war that has stained almost every year of my life. Especially now, in the midst of yet another unjustified, immoral, illegal, untenable, cynical, cruel war our nation wages in Iraq. I am impatient with fools who ask whether I “support our troops.”
What does it mean to “support our troops”? What is a troop but a herd, a flock, a band? What is a troop but a group of actors whose duty it is not to reason why, but to do and die? In the years I served in the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, I never took care of a troop; I took care of men who had been wounded and hurt, who cut themselves and bled, who suffered terrible blisters on their feet from long marches, who fell ill sick with high fevers. If to support means to carry the weight of, keep from falling, slipping, or sinking, give courage, faith, help, comfort, strengthen, provide for, bear, endure, tolerate, yes, I did, and do support all men and women unfortunate enough to go to war.
Troops, I do not. If to support means to give approval to, be in favor of, subscribe to, sanction, uphold, then I do not. The decision to make war was/is not theirs to make; troops are what those who make the decisions to war use (to kill and to be killed, to be brutalized into torturers) for their own ends, not for the sake of the men and woman who constitute the “troops.”
I honor veterans of war the only way in which I know how to honor: with compassion; with respect; with understanding for how they were/are used, misled, indoctrinated, coerced, wasted, hurt, abandoned; with tolerance for their beliefs and justifications; with efforts to see that their wounds, of body and of soul, are treated and healed, their suffering and sacrifice compensated. I never refuse requests for donations to any veterans’ organization that seeks benefits and services for veterans. I honor veterans, men and woman; not bands, not troops.
If you look to my window on this day, the flag you will see hanging there will be the rainbow flag of peace. It hangs there in honor of every veteran of any war of any time or place. Indoors, I will light a candle and burn sage, recommit myself to the struggle for justice and for peace. Such is the only way I know in which to honor the veterans of war, military or civilian.
Enrique González Prieto
-
-Veterans Day
When the First World War officially ended June 28, 1919, the actual fighting had already stopped the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the previous year. Armistice Day, as it was known, later became a national holiday, and in 1954 (the year I graduated from high school), the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans of all wars.
The only veteran of that war, “the war to end all wars”, I ever knew was my father’s step-father Benjamín Armijo, from New Mexico, an old man who seldom spoke and whom I would on occasion see wearing his cap of The American Legion. (He was also Republican.)
“The war to end all wars” was anything but that and when I was not much more than five, three of my uncles on my mother’s side (Roberto, Armando, Enrique) went off to fight another war, the Second World War.I missed my uncles and remembered them by their photos on my grandmother’s home altar, very handsome in their uniforms; in the endless rosaries and litanies the women in the family regularly met to pray; and in the three blue stars that hanged in the window.
My uncle Roberto, tío Beto, did not last his second year; he came home and ulcers and los nervios, nerves, were mentioned. My uncle Armando, tío Pana, in the Infantry division or the Cavalry Division (though not one horse was ever ridden into battle in that war), served in the Pacific Theater, and Guadalcanal is a name that in some way sticks in his history. My uncle Enrique, tío Kiki, the youngest, in the Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles,” served in the European Theater and parachuted into the taking of Germany.
After that war ended, they came home, tío Pana into a hospital, sick with malaria which affected him throughout the rest of his life; tío Kiki with a malady in the soul not so easily diagnosed, hidden in his quiet humor, gentle ways. All my uncles were gentle men, in all senses of the word. And Beto, Pana, Kiki spoke not at all about their experiences of war in spite of my curiosity and questions which they diverted with a little joke or change of subject. What they had seen, felt was apparently not to be spoken and the family sensed this and respected their reticence. Neither of them joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars that I ever knew.
The Korean War “broke out”, as they say, as if it were acne, not long after. But as for me, I have never fought in any war, though I joined the U. S. Navy upon graduating from El Paso High School to become a Hospital Corpsman and obtain the G.I. Bill with which to enter Pre-Med studies upon my discharge; two of four years in the Navy I spent in the Marine Corps with the rank of Staff Sergeant. The Korean War had already ended. And though I served closely enough to it to be given the Korea Defense Service Medal and am legally a veteran and eligible to join the VFW, I never did nor do I intend to.
If I consider myself veteran of any war, it would be of the Viet-Nam War, not because I fought in it, far from it, but because I struggled against it. (I counseled conscientious objectors, picketed recruiting offices, marched in the streets.) The war veterans I have most intimately known are from that war, many, if not most, wounded and ill in body (from bullets, shrapnel, agent-orange), wounded and ill in the soul (terror, guilt, shame, hatred putrefying their dreams, tainting their loves.)
I am leery of being asked to honor veterans of almost any war, except as I honor the suffering, the being of every man or woman who ever lived. I am sick of “patriotism” behind which so many scoundrels hide. I am sick of war that has stained almost every year of my life. Especially now, in the midst of yet another unjustified, immoral, illegal, untenable, cynical, cruel war our nation wages in Iraq. I am impatient with fools who ask whether I “support our troops.”
What does it mean to “support our troops”? What is a troop but a herd, a flock, a band? What is a troop but a group of actors whose duty it is not to reason why, but to do and die? In the years I served in the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, I never took care of a troop; I took care of men who had been wounded and hurt, who cut themselves and bled, who suffered terrible blisters on their feet from long marches, who fell ill sick with high fevers. If to support means to carry the weight of, keep from falling, slipping, or sinking, give courage, faith, help, comfort, strengthen, provide for, bear, endure, tolerate, yes, I did, and do support all men and women unfortunate enough to go to war.
Troops, I do not. If to support means to give approval to, be in favor of, subscribe to, sanction, uphold, then I do not. The decision to make war was/is not theirs to make; troops are what those who make the decisions to war use (to kill and to be killed, to be brutalized into torturers) for their own ends, not for the sake of the men and woman who constitute the “troops.”
I honor veterans of war the only way in which I know how to honor: with compassion; with respect; with understanding for how they were/are used, misled, indoctrinated, coerced, wasted, hurt, abandoned; with tolerance for their beliefs and justifications; with efforts to see that their wounds, of body and of soul, are treated and healed, their suffering and sacrifice compensated. I never refuse requests for donations to any veterans’ organization that seeks benefits and services for veterans. I honor veterans, men and woman; not bands, not troops.
If you look to my window on this day, the flag you will see hanging there will be the rainbow flag of peace. It hangs there in honor of every veteran of any war of any time or place. Indoors, I will light a candle and burn sage, recommit myself to the struggle for justice and for peace. Such is the only way I know in which to honor the veterans of war, military or civilian.
Berkeley, November 11, 2007
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
Enrique González PrietoTuesday, November 4, 2008
Election of Senator Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America
-
Tonight Senator Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States of America. I have often said that this election was the United States’ moment of truth. I am proud to say that we have faced that moment and we have done so honorably and have not been found wanting.
This is the only presidential election at which I have ever wept. Our country, empire that it is, that it has always been, has shown itself capable of change, of becoming more just, of overcoming its shameful legacy of racism enough to elect a man of undeniable African ancestry to the highest office of the land. That I have lived to see it gives me more joy, more hope than I can say.
As for Senator Obama the man, of his many virtues, I will not speak but only say that it makes my heart glad that he can smile; in eight long years, one can become very sick of a smirk. In his election speech he had the grace to place his election in its historical context and took the moment, not to aggrandize himself, but to place the responsibility for the welfare of the nation in our own hands, us the citizens, where, in a democracy, it truly must rest.
Senator Obama’s election as president of the nation is, more than a victory, a challenge and an opportunity for us as a people to truly begin to make of our country the democracy to which we have for so long pretended. The task will be difficult and long, but hope and faith has been renewed and change for the good is possible, nay, is imperative. Yes, we can. If we will.
Esta noche el senador Barack Obama fue elegido el cuarenta-cuarto presidente de los Estados Unidos de América. A menudo he dicho que estas elecciones eran el momento de la verdad para los Estados Unidos. Diré con orgullo que nos hemos enfrentado a ese momento y lo hemos hecho honorablemente y nos hemos encontrado capaces.
Esta es la única elección presidencial en la cual jamás he llorado. Nuestra nación, emperio que es, que siempre ha sido, se ha mostrado capaz de cambiar, de hacerse más justa, de superar su legado penoso de racismo lo suficiente como para elegir a un hombre de descendencia Africana innegable a la oficina más alta de la nación. Que he vivido para verlo me ocasiona más regocijo, más esperanza que de lo que pueda expresar.
En tanto al Senador Obama el hombre, de sus muchas virtudes no hablaré mas solamente para decir que me llena de alegría el corazón que él sea capaz de sonreír; en ocho largos años uno se puede hartar de la mueca complacida. En su discurso de elección tuvo la gracia de ubicar su elección dentro el marco histórico y tomó el momento, no para exaltarse a si mismo, sino para poner la responsabilidad por el bienestar de la nación en nuestras propias manos, nuestras de los ciudadanos, donde, en una democracia, verdaderamente debe estar.
La elección del senador Obama como presidente de la nación es, más que victoria, un reto y una oportunidad para nosotros como pueblo para verdaderamente empezar a hace de nuestro país la democracia a la cual hemos pretendido por hace tanto. La tarea será difícil y larga pero la esperanza y la fe se han renovado y el cambio para lo bueno es posible, no, imprescindible. Sí se puede. Si lo deseamos.
Tonight Senator Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States of America. I have often said that this election was the United States’ moment of truth. I am proud to say that we have faced that moment and we have done so honorably and have not been found wanting.
This is the only presidential election at which I have ever wept. Our country, empire that it is, that it has always been, has shown itself capable of change, of becoming more just, of overcoming its shameful legacy of racism enough to elect a man of undeniable African ancestry to the highest office of the land. That I have lived to see it gives me more joy, more hope than I can say.
As for Senator Obama the man, of his many virtues, I will not speak but only say that it makes my heart glad that he can smile; in eight long years, one can become very sick of a smirk. In his election speech he had the grace to place his election in its historical context and took the moment, not to aggrandize himself, but to place the responsibility for the welfare of the nation in our own hands, us the citizens, where, in a democracy, it truly must rest.
Senator Obama’s election as president of the nation is, more than a victory, a challenge and an opportunity for us as a people to truly begin to make of our country the democracy to which we have for so long pretended. The task will be difficult and long, but hope and faith has been renewed and change for the good is possible, nay, is imperative. Yes, we can. If we will.
Rafael Jesús González
Esta noche el senador Barack Obama fue elegido el cuarenta-cuarto presidente de los Estados Unidos de América. A menudo he dicho que estas elecciones eran el momento de la verdad para los Estados Unidos. Diré con orgullo que nos hemos enfrentado a ese momento y lo hemos hecho honorablemente y nos hemos encontrado capaces.
Esta es la única elección presidencial en la cual jamás he llorado. Nuestra nación, emperio que es, que siempre ha sido, se ha mostrado capaz de cambiar, de hacerse más justa, de superar su legado penoso de racismo lo suficiente como para elegir a un hombre de descendencia Africana innegable a la oficina más alta de la nación. Que he vivido para verlo me ocasiona más regocijo, más esperanza que de lo que pueda expresar.
En tanto al Senador Obama el hombre, de sus muchas virtudes no hablaré mas solamente para decir que me llena de alegría el corazón que él sea capaz de sonreír; en ocho largos años uno se puede hartar de la mueca complacida. En su discurso de elección tuvo la gracia de ubicar su elección dentro el marco histórico y tomó el momento, no para exaltarse a si mismo, sino para poner la responsabilidad por el bienestar de la nación en nuestras propias manos, nuestras de los ciudadanos, donde, en una democracia, verdaderamente debe estar.
La elección del senador Obama como presidente de la nación es, más que victoria, un reto y una oportunidad para nosotros como pueblo para verdaderamente empezar a hace de nuestro país la democracia a la cual hemos pretendido por hace tanto. La tarea será difícil y larga pero la esperanza y la fe se han renovado y el cambio para lo bueno es posible, no, imprescindible. Sí se puede. Si lo deseamos.
Rafael Jesús González
-
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Feast of All Souls (Day of the Dead)
--
--
--Consejo para el peregrino a Mictlan
------------------------(al modo Nahua)
Cruza el campo amarillo de cempoales,
baja al reino de las sombras;
es amplio, es estrecho.
Interroga a los ancianos;
son sabios, son necios:
— Señores míos, Señoras mías,
¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
¿Son verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja? —
Acepta sólo lo preciso:
-----lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro.
------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
-----Advice for the Pilgrim to Mictlan
------------------- (in the Nahua mode)
Cross the yellow fields of marigolds,
descend to the realm of shadows;
it is wide, it is narrow.
Question the ancients;
they are wise, they are fools:
— My Lords, My Ladies,
What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink? —
Accept only the necessary:
-----what will widen your heart
----what will enlighten your face.
------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
Descent to Mictlan, The Land of the Dead
(Trance Poem in the Nahua Mode)
[Descent to Mictlan, Land of the Dead: Trance Poem in the Nahua mode (commissioned by the Oakland Museum of California while the author was Poet in Residence under a Writers on Site award by Poets & Writers, Inc. and a grant from The James Irvine Foundation in 1996) was written as a performance piece for voice, drums, didgeridoos, and movement intended to guide the audience upon an introspective journey of the imagination down into the kingdom of Death.
It is not so much entertainment as it is ritual art which, with the consent of each person in the audience to give himself or herself to their imagination, would induce the heightened perception of trance to descend into our collective and personal past to examine the legacy of our ancestors. What they have given us, we have become. It may be read by the attentive reader in the same way.
The times demand that we take stock of who we are, for our great Mother the Earth is wounded and, to heal her, we must heal ourselves, learn from the wisdom of our forebears and discard their mistakes. And in return for what each brings back from the store house of the past, each must make a commitment, in good faith, to change and to heal ourselves; and to care for and protect the Earth, all that she bears, and each other in brotherhood and sisterhood of the spirit and of the flesh. It is a gift and a blessing. Any less and we risk our own extinction on the Earth.]
Cruzad el campo amarillo de cempoales.
Cross the yellow fields of marigolds.
Bajad al reino de las sombras — es amplio, es estrecho.
Descend to the realm of shadows — it is wide, it is narrow.
We come to the mouth of the cavern of caverns,
realm of Mictlantecuhtli, Mictlancihuatl,
Señor-Señora Muerte, Our Lord, Our Lady of Death —
It is wide, it is narrow;
pasad, enter this chamber of yellow blooms,
--------the cempoalxochitl, the shield flower,
------------flor de muertos, flower of the Dead.
We step, we walk;
-----we walk the sacred;
---------every step is sacred.
We walk in the tracks of our ancestors,
we step in the tracks of the old ones,
----our grandmothers, our grandfathers,
----the ancients:
--------the people of the drum
--------the people of the canoe
--------the people of the pyramids
--------the people of the spear
--------the people of the shuttle and loom
--------the people of the sickle and plow,
------------our ancient ones, all of the clans.
They taught us to see;
they taught us not to see;
-----from them we learned to see;
-----------we learned not to see.
They taught us to dream;
------they taught us to fear;
-----------much to learn, much to unlearn.
We step in their tracks, we step on the sacred.
We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
----our relations:
---------the ocelot
---------the buffalo
---------the coyote
---------the bear
---------the salmon, the serpent, the eagle, the hawk,
---------monkey, turtle, frog,
---------the owl and the bat.
Further, further we walk:
the spider, the moth, the fly, the coral, the mite,
ameba, paramecium, germ, virus - all of the clans.
They taught us to see, to live in the now,
------to smell, to taste,
------to hear, to live in the now.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
our relations:
-----the fern, the redwood
-----the pine, the oak
-----the cactus, the mesquite
-----the violet, the rose
-----the fig, the grape-vine, the wheat
-----the corn, the thistle, the grass
-----the mushroom, the moss, the lichen, the algae,
-----the mold — all of the clans.
They taught us to touch, to fully delight in the here,
------to find contentment on the here.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
We walk, we step
-----in the tracks of our ancestors, our relations:
--------the granite, the sandstone
--------the jasper, the serpentine
--------the turquoise, the flint
--------the opal, the crystal
--------the agate, the jade
--------the gold, the iron
----the silver, the lead, the copper, the tin,
----boulder, pebble, sand, dust — all of the clans.
They taught us silence, quiet;
------they taught us to stay, to be.
We step in their track,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
------It is dark; it is light —
here the roots of the Tree of Life,
------árbol de la vida, tree of Tamoanchan.
Look: wealth, treasure, our inheritance.
Look: teocuitatl, oro, gold, shit of the gods
-------chalchihuitl, jade, jade, the green stone
-------quetzalli, plumas, feathers, the precious things
-------xochitl, flores, the roots of flowers —
gifts and burdens,
------the useful, the hindering,
----------the dark medicine, the glittering poison.
Pick and choose: empowering joys there are,
--------------------useless sorrows there are;
needs true — clear and lovely as water
desires true — ruddy and joyous as wine;
--------needs false and deadly as arsenic
--------desires false and deadly as knives;
swords of jewels, plows muddied and dulled by stones;
--------dazzling powders, herbs rich in visions.
Choose and sort — it is not much you can carry.
Our ancestors, our relations make council; listen:
Much have our mothers, our fathers
-------our grandmothers, our grandfathers
-------our ancestors left us:
-----------gifts are there for our blessing
-----------debts are there for our curse.
Interroga a los ancianos — son sabios, son necios.
Question the ancients — they are wise, they are fools.
Señores míos, Señoras mías — my Lords, my Ladies,
---------¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
---------What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
---------¿Són verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
---------Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
---------¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
---------Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
---------Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
---------Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
---------Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja?
---------Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink?
They offer gifts, they give teachings:
------precious, worthless
------healing, dangerous —
sort, choose — choose the precious, the healing;
-----------------discard the worthless, the harmful;
------there is much to learn, there is much to unlearn.
Choose - each offers gifts, our ancestors, our relations —
---------human, animal, plant, mineral —
------------------they are us, our relations.
Choose and sort, sort and choose
---------these gifts are of the Earth, la Tierra
---------these gifts celebrate and nurture her
---------these gifts blaspheme and destroy her
---------------------These gifts are of the Earth.
Sort and choose, choose and sort.
-----The ancients are wise, the ancients are fools;
----------riches they gathered, garbage they hoarded.
Acepta sólo lo preciso; accept only the necessary:
--------lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------what will widen your heart
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro
--------what will enlighten your face.
Pick and choose —
------hush —
--------------in silence sort and choose, sort and choose.
Hush —
----------Look carefully - have we chosen well?
the way back is hard, full of dread
----and much have our ancestors left us.
---------What of their gifts is worth the sharing?
----------------Consider well —
------------------------the gold and the jeweled sword
--------------------is not more than the work-dulled plow.
Consider, test your choice —
---------------------------------hush —
Tasks await us on the Earth for our healing, for hers —
-------difficult, great.
---------------Choose well for the journey, for the work.
hush —
---------remember:
----------------------joy is the root of our strength,
------------- the roots that feed us come from the heart
---------the science most wise disturbs least —
-----hush — hush — hush
So, we choose what we choose.
Remember: from these gifts we make our own;
--------------we add to the hoard.
-------Do not burden the children.
Do not carry so much we cannot hold each other’s hands.
----Remember: the most precious treasure
-----------------is that which we take for the giving.
We choose what we choose —
-----make ready — take up your bundle,
-----the seeds of our making - it is light, it is heavy;
-----precious are the bones of our ancestors;
-----leaving them buried makes them no less precious;
they are of the Earth, Madre Tierra, Coatlicue,
-----------------Pachi Mama, the Earth needs them.
------ehecatl, aire, air
------tletl, fuego, fire
------atl, agua, water
------tlalli, tierra, earth.
Make ready to leave the store house, the treasure;
walk round the cavern once as the clock turns
------from the East, red and gold with knowledge
------to the South yellow and green with love
------to the West black and blue with strength
------to the North white with healing.
You are now at the threshold — it is wide, it is narrow
-----------------------------------it is dark, it is light
-----------------------------------it is steep, it is plain.
Do not look back;
leave Mictlan, reino de la muerte, realm of the dead;
-------leave the cave of the ancients,
--------------the cave of our treasure;
------------------begin the way back.
What you bring back from the land of the dead,
-------from among the bones of the ancestors,
-------------is your gift to life.
---------------------Pray the gods you choose well.
Vuelve, vuelve, return.
It is your commitment,
-----the healing of yourself and the Earth.
What will you do?
-------How will you honor the ancestors?
-------------What will you say to the children?
--------------------What will you do for justice and peace?
Vuelve, vuelve, return.
Go, vete —
------------lleva la bendición de la vida;
------------------carry the blessing of life.
------------Go, vete —
form a face, form a heart.
forma un rostro, un corazón
in ixtli, in yollotl
Go, vete, go —
que los dioses te tengan, may the gods keep you.
In whatever you do, bendice la vida,
--------------pass on the blessing of life.
Vete y bendice la vida;
-----Go and pass on the blessing of life.
Vete, ha acabado; Go, the journey is finished —
Vete y empieza un día nuevo,
-----Go and begin a new day.
-----Vete, Go.
-
-
--
--Consejo para el peregrino a Mictlan------------------------(al modo Nahua)
Cruza el campo amarillo de cempoales,
baja al reino de las sombras;
es amplio, es estrecho.
Interroga a los ancianos;
son sabios, son necios:
— Señores míos, Señoras mías,
¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
¿Son verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja? —
Acepta sólo lo preciso:
-----lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro.
------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
-----Advice for the Pilgrim to Mictlan
------------------- (in the Nahua mode)
Cross the yellow fields of marigolds,
descend to the realm of shadows;
it is wide, it is narrow.
Question the ancients;
they are wise, they are fools:
— My Lords, My Ladies,
What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink? —
Accept only the necessary:
-----what will widen your heart
----what will enlighten your face.
------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2007
Descent to Mictlan, The Land of the Dead(Trance Poem in the Nahua Mode)
It is not so much entertainment as it is ritual art which, with the consent of each person in the audience to give himself or herself to their imagination, would induce the heightened perception of trance to descend into our collective and personal past to examine the legacy of our ancestors. What they have given us, we have become. It may be read by the attentive reader in the same way.
The times demand that we take stock of who we are, for our great Mother the Earth is wounded and, to heal her, we must heal ourselves, learn from the wisdom of our forebears and discard their mistakes. And in return for what each brings back from the store house of the past, each must make a commitment, in good faith, to change and to heal ourselves; and to care for and protect the Earth, all that she bears, and each other in brotherhood and sisterhood of the spirit and of the flesh. It is a gift and a blessing. Any less and we risk our own extinction on the Earth.]
Cruzad el campo amarillo de cempoales.
Cross the yellow fields of marigolds.
Bajad al reino de las sombras — es amplio, es estrecho.
Descend to the realm of shadows — it is wide, it is narrow.
We come to the mouth of the cavern of caverns,
realm of Mictlantecuhtli, Mictlancihuatl,
Señor-Señora Muerte, Our Lord, Our Lady of Death —
It is wide, it is narrow;
pasad, enter this chamber of yellow blooms,
--------the cempoalxochitl, the shield flower,
------------flor de muertos, flower of the Dead.
We step, we walk;
-----we walk the sacred;
---------every step is sacred.
We walk in the tracks of our ancestors,
we step in the tracks of the old ones,
----our grandmothers, our grandfathers,
----the ancients:
--------the people of the drum
--------the people of the canoe
--------the people of the pyramids
--------the people of the spear
--------the people of the shuttle and loom
--------the people of the sickle and plow,
------------our ancient ones, all of the clans.
They taught us to see;
they taught us not to see;
-----from them we learned to see;
-----------we learned not to see.
They taught us to dream;
------they taught us to fear;
-----------much to learn, much to unlearn.
We step in their tracks, we step on the sacred.
We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
----our relations:
---------the ocelot
---------the buffalo
---------the coyote
---------the bear
---------the salmon, the serpent, the eagle, the hawk,
---------monkey, turtle, frog,
---------the owl and the bat.
Further, further we walk:
the spider, the moth, the fly, the coral, the mite,
ameba, paramecium, germ, virus - all of the clans.
They taught us to see, to live in the now,
------to smell, to taste,
------to hear, to live in the now.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
our relations:
-----the fern, the redwood
-----the pine, the oak
-----the cactus, the mesquite
-----the violet, the rose
-----the fig, the grape-vine, the wheat
-----the corn, the thistle, the grass
-----the mushroom, the moss, the lichen, the algae,
-----the mold — all of the clans.
They taught us to touch, to fully delight in the here,
------to find contentment on the here.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
We walk, we step
-----in the tracks of our ancestors, our relations:
--------the granite, the sandstone
--------the jasper, the serpentine
--------the turquoise, the flint
--------the opal, the crystal
--------the agate, the jade
--------the gold, the iron
----the silver, the lead, the copper, the tin,
----boulder, pebble, sand, dust — all of the clans.
They taught us silence, quiet;
------they taught us to stay, to be.
We step in their track,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.
------It is dark; it is light —
here the roots of the Tree of Life,
------árbol de la vida, tree of Tamoanchan.
Look: wealth, treasure, our inheritance.
Look: teocuitatl, oro, gold, shit of the gods
-------chalchihuitl, jade, jade, the green stone
-------quetzalli, plumas, feathers, the precious things
-------xochitl, flores, the roots of flowers —
gifts and burdens,
------the useful, the hindering,
----------the dark medicine, the glittering poison.
Pick and choose: empowering joys there are,
--------------------useless sorrows there are;
needs true — clear and lovely as water
desires true — ruddy and joyous as wine;
--------needs false and deadly as arsenic
--------desires false and deadly as knives;
swords of jewels, plows muddied and dulled by stones;
--------dazzling powders, herbs rich in visions.
Choose and sort — it is not much you can carry.
Our ancestors, our relations make council; listen:
Much have our mothers, our fathers
-------our grandmothers, our grandfathers
-------our ancestors left us:
-----------gifts are there for our blessing
-----------debts are there for our curse.
Interroga a los ancianos — son sabios, son necios.
Question the ancients — they are wise, they are fools.
Señores míos, Señoras mías — my Lords, my Ladies,
---------¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
---------What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
---------¿Són verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
---------Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
---------¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
---------Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
---------Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
---------Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
---------Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja?
---------Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink?
They offer gifts, they give teachings:
------precious, worthless
------healing, dangerous —
sort, choose — choose the precious, the healing;
-----------------discard the worthless, the harmful;
------there is much to learn, there is much to unlearn.
Choose - each offers gifts, our ancestors, our relations —
---------human, animal, plant, mineral —
------------------they are us, our relations.
Choose and sort, sort and choose
---------these gifts are of the Earth, la Tierra
---------these gifts celebrate and nurture her
---------these gifts blaspheme and destroy her
---------------------These gifts are of the Earth.
Sort and choose, choose and sort.
-----The ancients are wise, the ancients are fools;
----------riches they gathered, garbage they hoarded.
Acepta sólo lo preciso; accept only the necessary:
--------lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------what will widen your heart
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro
--------what will enlighten your face.
Pick and choose —
------hush —
--------------in silence sort and choose, sort and choose.
Hush —
----------Look carefully - have we chosen well?
the way back is hard, full of dread
----and much have our ancestors left us.
---------What of their gifts is worth the sharing?
----------------Consider well —
------------------------the gold and the jeweled sword
--------------------is not more than the work-dulled plow.
Consider, test your choice —
---------------------------------hush —
Tasks await us on the Earth for our healing, for hers —
-------difficult, great.
---------------Choose well for the journey, for the work.
hush —
---------remember:
----------------------joy is the root of our strength,
------------- the roots that feed us come from the heart
---------the science most wise disturbs least —
-----hush — hush — hush
So, we choose what we choose.
Remember: from these gifts we make our own;
--------------we add to the hoard.
-------Do not burden the children.
Do not carry so much we cannot hold each other’s hands.
----Remember: the most precious treasure
-----------------is that which we take for the giving.
We choose what we choose —
-----make ready — take up your bundle,
-----the seeds of our making - it is light, it is heavy;
-----precious are the bones of our ancestors;
-----leaving them buried makes them no less precious;
they are of the Earth, Madre Tierra, Coatlicue,
-----------------Pachi Mama, the Earth needs them.
------ehecatl, aire, air
------tletl, fuego, fire
------atl, agua, water
------tlalli, tierra, earth.
Make ready to leave the store house, the treasure;
walk round the cavern once as the clock turns
------from the East, red and gold with knowledge
------to the South yellow and green with love
------to the West black and blue with strength
------to the North white with healing.
You are now at the threshold — it is wide, it is narrow
-----------------------------------it is dark, it is light
-----------------------------------it is steep, it is plain.
Do not look back;
leave Mictlan, reino de la muerte, realm of the dead;
-------leave the cave of the ancients,
--------------the cave of our treasure;
------------------begin the way back.
What you bring back from the land of the dead,
-------from among the bones of the ancestors,
-------------is your gift to life.
---------------------Pray the gods you choose well.
Vuelve, vuelve, return.
It is your commitment,
-----the healing of yourself and the Earth.
What will you do?
-------How will you honor the ancestors?
-------------What will you say to the children?
--------------------What will you do for justice and peace?
Vuelve, vuelve, return.
Go, vete —
------------lleva la bendición de la vida;
------------------carry the blessing of life.
------------Go, vete —
form a face, form a heart.
forma un rostro, un corazón
in ixtli, in yollotl
Go, vete, go —
que los dioses te tengan, may the gods keep you.
In whatever you do, bendice la vida,
--------------pass on the blessing of life.
Vete y bendice la vida;
-----Go and pass on the blessing of life.
Vete, ha acabado; Go, the journey is finished —
Vete y empieza un día nuevo,
-----Go and begin a new day.
-----Vete, Go.
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
--
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Feast of All Saints (to make an ofrenda)
-
A la memoria de Louis "Studs" Terkel (16 mayo 1912 – 31 octubre 2008) siempre luchador por la justicia con todo su intelecto, con todo el corazón. Tomemos todos su antorcha.
To the memory of Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) always a fighter for justice with all his intellect, with all his heart. Let us all take up his torch.
El corazón de la muerte ~ The Heart of Death
-------ofrenda a los difuntos --------------- offering to the dead
---------al modo nahua------- / --------------in the Nahua mode
---Le hacemos, formamos
---el corazón a la muerte —
---We make, we form
---the heart of death —
de flores
de flores amarillas,
del cempoalxochitl —
of flowers
of yellow flowers
of marigolds —
de agua
de agua clara,
consuelo de la sed —
of water
of clear water
comfort of thirst —
de pan
de maíz, de trigo
nuestro sustento —
of bread
of corn, of wheat
our sustenance —
de comida y bebida
de nuestro alimento
que da deleite al paladar —
of food & drink
of our nutrition
that gives the palate delight —
de luz
de luz que alumbra el camino
anhelo de mariposas
-------------------nocturnas —
of light
of light that shows the way
desire of night moths —
de calaveras de azúcar
de calaveras dulces
como la vida fugaz —
of sugar skulls
of candy skulls
sweet as fleeting life —
de copal, artemisa,
incienso, humo perfumado
que invoca a los dioses —
of copal, sage,
incense, perfumed smoke
that invokes the gods —
de flor y canto
de flor y canto le hacemos
el corazón a la muerte.
of flower & song
of flower & song we make
the heart of death.
-------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
-
A la memoria de Louis "Studs" Terkel (16 mayo 1912 – 31 octubre 2008) siempre luchador por la justicia con todo su intelecto, con todo el corazón. Tomemos todos su antorcha.
To the memory of Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) always a fighter for justice with all his intellect, with all his heart. Let us all take up his torch.
El corazón de la muerte ~ The Heart of Death
-------ofrenda a los difuntos --------------- offering to the dead
---------al modo nahua------- / --------------in the Nahua mode
---Le hacemos, formamos
---el corazón a la muerte —
---We make, we form
---the heart of death —
de flores
de flores amarillas,
del cempoalxochitl —
of flowers
of yellow flowers
of marigolds —
de agua
de agua clara,
consuelo de la sed —
of water
of clear water
comfort of thirst —
de pan
de maíz, de trigo
nuestro sustento —
of bread
of corn, of wheat
our sustenance —
de comida y bebidade nuestro alimento
que da deleite al paladar —
of food & drink
of our nutrition
that gives the palate delight —
de luzde luz que alumbra el camino
anhelo de mariposas
-------------------nocturnas —
of light
of light that shows the way
desire of night moths —
de calaveras de azúcarde calaveras dulces
como la vida fugaz —
of sugar skulls
of candy skulls
sweet as fleeting life —
de copal, artemisa,
incienso, humo perfumado
que invoca a los dioses —
of copal, sage,
incense, perfumed smoke
that invokes the gods —
de flor y canto
de flor y canto le hacemos
el corazón a la muerte.
of flower & song
of flower & song we make
the heart of death.
-------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
-
-
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloween
-
- - ---------Trick & Treat
Death at the door,
----or lurking among the leaves,
death itself is the inevitable trick;
the only treat worth the having,
----to love fearlessly,
------------------------and well.
-------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, Issue 7, Spring 2003;
author’s copyrights)
-----------Chasco y Regalo
La muerte a la puerta,
----o en emboscada entre la hojas,
la muerte misma es el chasco inevitable;
el único regalo que vale la pena,
-----amar sin temor,
------------------------y amar bien.
---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
In the Western cultures and in the cultures of Meso-America, we come to the Feast of Samhain (sa-win), Feast of All Souls, Día de muertos, in which we render honor to the dead, those who have crossed to that vast realm to which we all that live are destined.
How shall we best honor them who gave us life, whom we loved, or whom we never knew but whose gifts, and curses, we carry in our genes from since the very roots of our species in ancient Africa, and beyond?
In this nation of the United States, and by extension, the world, we have come to our moment of truth. In essence the contention, the choice is between a wide-hearted spirit of compassion, of justice, of care for one another, and respect for the Earth on the one hand and a narrow-hearted spirit of meanness, of unjust privilege, of disregard for one another, and abuse of the Earth on the other. One choice is founded on hope and optimism and adherence to our highest ideals, the other on fear and cynicism and willingness to sacrifice the very freedoms for which we once prided ourselves, and the Earth itself.
By what choices we make, what votes we cast we will declare ourselves in one camp or the other. Our myths in the West no longer serve us and it is up to us to honor our dead by honoring life with compassion and love or dishonoring them by choosing the road to extinction through fear and disregard for one another and for the Earth itself.
May we choose wisely and truly honor our dead by honoring one another, life, and the Earth that bears it.
En las culturas occidentales y en las culturas de Mezo-América, llegamos a la Fiesta de Samhain (sa-huin), Fiesta de todas las ánimas, Día de muertos, en las cuales rendimos honor a los muertos, los que han cruzado al vasto reino al cual todos los que vivimos somos destinados.
¿Cómo mejor honrar a los que nos dieron la vida, a quienes amamos, o a quienes jamás conocimos pero de quienes dones, y maldiciones, llevamos en nuestros genes desde las meras raíces de nuestra especie en la África antigua y más allá?
En esta nación de los Estados Unidos, y por extensión el mundo, hemos llegado a nuestro momento de la verdad. En esencia la contienda, la opción es entre un espíritu compasivo de amplio corazón, de justicia, de amor uno por el otro y respeto a la Tierra en una mano y un espíritu estrecho y mezquino de privilegio injusto, de falta de respeto uno al otro y abuso de la Tierra en la otra. Una opción se basa en la esperanza y el optimismo y adherencia a nuestros más altos ideales, la otra en el temor y el cinismo y una disposición a sacrificar las meras libertades de las cuales una vez nos enorgullecíamos y la Tierra misma.
Por cual opción tomamos, por cuales votos hagamos, nos declararemos en un campo o el otro. Nuestros mitos en el Occidente ya no nos sirven y queda en nosotros honrar a nuestros muertos honrando la vida con compasión y amor o deshonrándolos optando por un camino hacia la extinción por temor y falta de respeto uno hacia al otro y hacia la tierra misma.
Que optemos sabiamente y verdaderamente honremos a nuestros muertos honrándonos unos a los otros, a la vida y a la Tierra que la engendra.
-
-
-
- - ---------Trick & Treat
Death at the door,
----or lurking among the leaves,
death itself is the inevitable trick;
the only treat worth the having,
----to love fearlessly,
------------------------and well.
-------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
(The Montserrat Review, Issue 7, Spring 2003;
author’s copyrights)
-----------Chasco y RegaloLa muerte a la puerta,
----o en emboscada entre la hojas,
la muerte misma es el chasco inevitable;
el único regalo que vale la pena,
-----amar sin temor,
------------------------y amar bien.
---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
In the Western cultures and in the cultures of Meso-America, we come to the Feast of Samhain (sa-win), Feast of All Souls, Día de muertos, in which we render honor to the dead, those who have crossed to that vast realm to which we all that live are destined.
How shall we best honor them who gave us life, whom we loved, or whom we never knew but whose gifts, and curses, we carry in our genes from since the very roots of our species in ancient Africa, and beyond?
In this nation of the United States, and by extension, the world, we have come to our moment of truth. In essence the contention, the choice is between a wide-hearted spirit of compassion, of justice, of care for one another, and respect for the Earth on the one hand and a narrow-hearted spirit of meanness, of unjust privilege, of disregard for one another, and abuse of the Earth on the other. One choice is founded on hope and optimism and adherence to our highest ideals, the other on fear and cynicism and willingness to sacrifice the very freedoms for which we once prided ourselves, and the Earth itself.
By what choices we make, what votes we cast we will declare ourselves in one camp or the other. Our myths in the West no longer serve us and it is up to us to honor our dead by honoring life with compassion and love or dishonoring them by choosing the road to extinction through fear and disregard for one another and for the Earth itself.
May we choose wisely and truly honor our dead by honoring one another, life, and the Earth that bears it.
~ Rafael Jesús González
En las culturas occidentales y en las culturas de Mezo-América, llegamos a la Fiesta de Samhain (sa-huin), Fiesta de todas las ánimas, Día de muertos, en las cuales rendimos honor a los muertos, los que han cruzado al vasto reino al cual todos los que vivimos somos destinados.
¿Cómo mejor honrar a los que nos dieron la vida, a quienes amamos, o a quienes jamás conocimos pero de quienes dones, y maldiciones, llevamos en nuestros genes desde las meras raíces de nuestra especie en la África antigua y más allá?
En esta nación de los Estados Unidos, y por extensión el mundo, hemos llegado a nuestro momento de la verdad. En esencia la contienda, la opción es entre un espíritu compasivo de amplio corazón, de justicia, de amor uno por el otro y respeto a la Tierra en una mano y un espíritu estrecho y mezquino de privilegio injusto, de falta de respeto uno al otro y abuso de la Tierra en la otra. Una opción se basa en la esperanza y el optimismo y adherencia a nuestros más altos ideales, la otra en el temor y el cinismo y una disposición a sacrificar las meras libertades de las cuales una vez nos enorgullecíamos y la Tierra misma.
Por cual opción tomamos, por cuales votos hagamos, nos declararemos en un campo o el otro. Nuestros mitos en el Occidente ya no nos sirven y queda en nosotros honrar a nuestros muertos honrando la vida con compasión y amor o deshonrándolos optando por un camino hacia la extinción por temor y falta de respeto uno hacia al otro y hacia la tierra misma.
Que optemos sabiamente y verdaderamente honremos a nuestros muertos honrándonos unos a los otros, a la vida y a la Tierra que la engendra.
~ Rafael Jesús González
-
-
-
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Mexico's Día de Muertos through the centuries
--
Awed by the eternal cycle of life and death and the need of sacrifice to assure the continuation of life, ages before the Spaniards came to the Americas, the peoples of ancient Mexico, particularly the Nahuas, of which the Mexica (generally called Aztecs) formed a part, celebrated the dead in a great feast quite different from the one we know today. It began on August 8, by the European calendar, and they called it Micailhuitontli, Small Feast of the Dead, to honor their dead children. On that morning, the people went to the forest and cut down a tall, straight tree which they brought to the gates of the city. There, for twenty days, they blessed the tree and stripped it of its bark.
During those twenty days, they did ritual, sacrificed, feasted, danced, and made offerings to the dead of cempoalxochitl flowers, fire, copal, food, and drink. Then, on August 28, which they called Huey Micailhuitl (Great Feast of the Dead), in honor of their adult dead, they made a large figure of a bird perched on flowering branches out of amaranth seed dough, painted it brightly, and decorated it with colorful feathers. They fixed the dough bird to the end of the tree trunk, raised it in the courtyard of the Great Temple, and honored it with more offerings, singing, copal, dances, sacrifice, and bloodletting.
One hour before sunset, the young noblemen climbed the pole to bring down the figure of the bird. The youths who reached the top first and brought down the dough figure were much honored. They broke it up and passed it out among the people to eat; they called it “flesh of the god.” Then they brought down the pole and broke it up, and everyone tried to take a piece of it back to their homes because it was holy.
The pole and its god-bird on flowering branches must have stood for the mythical Tree of Life that grew in the earthly paradise of Tamoanchan. The blood of sacrifice nourished the Tree of Life, just as Quetzalcoatl, Plumed Serpent, God of Life, shed his blood to create humankind. The ritual of the pole and the flesh of the god honored the fact that life cannot be separated from death; we live and die, and our deaths are the price of living.
Composed of both joy and pain, life is brief and uncertain, its end a question that disquiets the heart. Many poems addressing this sad truth were composed by the Nahua poets, the most famous of whom was Nezahualcoyotl, King of Texcoco, who said:
------------------Is it true that one lives on earth?
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!
------------------Even the precious stones chip away,
------------------even the gold falls apart,
------------------even the precious feathers tear.
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!
The peoples of ancient Mexico created wonderful pieces of sacred art in which life and death are united. The greatest, perhaps, is the great Coatlicue (now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City), who was at one and the same time terrifying and life-giving, the goddess of life and death, Earth-Mother of the gods, of humankind: mother of all. They carved statues depicting Quetzalcoatl, God of Life, on one side, and on the other, Mictlantecuhtli, God of Death. They painted pictures of the gods of life and death indivisibly joined together, such as the ones in the Borgia Codex, one of the very few of their marvelous books that survive.
When someone died, a piece of green-stone was placed in his or her mouth to take the place of the heart. The people believed that most of the dead went to a gray region of shadows called Mictlan (Land of the Dead), led by a little dog through nine levels of trials. Only the warriors killed in battle, the victims of sacrifice, and the women who had died in childbirth went to the realm of the Sun. Suicides and those who drowned, or were struck by lightning, or died of certain illnesses associated with water went to the place of Tlaloc, God of the Rain. Children who died young went to the realm of Ometeotl, Lord/Lady of Duality, to be nursed by a tree in a place called Chichihualcuauhco.
Mexico under Spain
These were the beliefs and the customs of the natives when the Spaniards came to Mexico and conquered Tenochtitlan and the Mexica empire in 1521. Along with the horse, the gun, and disease, the Europeans brought a new religion, Christianity. They called the people Indians and forced them to convert.
Some of the Christian beliefs were similar to the ancient ones: the Sun had demanded bleeding hearts torn from sacrificial victims to pay for life; God the Father required the bloody sacrifice of his only Son to pay for salvation. Coatlicue had conceived the god Huitzilopochtli without intercourse with a man; the virgin Mary had also miraculously conceived Jesus. The Indians ate the “flesh of the god’’ in a piece of amaranth dough; Christians ate the flesh of Christ in a piece of unleavened bread. Indians did penance; so did the Christians.
But some of the Christian beliefs were entirely new to the natives, such as the notion of a place where the dead went as either reward or punishment for how they had lived their lives: a happy heaven, with angels, saints, and gods (as they perceived the Trinity) and a painful hell, full of demons and evildoers. The new Mother of God was not terrible, as Coatlicue was, but sweet and demure as she stood on the black obsidian moon in front of the sun and wore the starry night sky for her cloak. Tonantzin, Mother of Us All, was now called Our Lady of Guadalupe, an Arabic place-name of Moorish Spain.
In spite of their conversion, the native people kept their ancient customs as best they could by adapting them to the demands of the new religion, transferring the old celebrations to the holidays of the Christian calendar. They were forced to change the rituals of their days of the dead but kept as their core the ofrenda (the altar with offerings to the dead). And they still grew (and do to this day) the yellow cempoalxochitl, the cempoal, marigold, known popularly as flor de muerto (flower of the dead), which they used especially to honor the dead. They transferred the two Feasts of the Dead to the Christian Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. (Long before, between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Christian Church itself had set the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls on the first and second of November, converting the ancient European Celtic feast of the harvest and of the dead, Samhain [sá-win], into a Christian holiday.)
The melding of two cultures
Spanish art offered images of death, similar to those the natives knew, in the martyred Christ and saints, and memento mori (“remember that you die”) images of skulls from the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death. The conquered people merged their old symbols with those of the conquerors. The indigenous cross of the four cardinal points became the Christian cross. The Tree of Life came to refer to the Garden of Eden as well, and eventually gave rise to the beautiful clay árboles de la vida with birds on flowering branches that we know today. The amaranth-dough offerings were replaced by the popular wheat pan de muerto (bread of the dead).
One great change in the Spanish colonial period was the evolvement of humor and whimsy that we today associate with los Día de Muertos and that make the holiday so uniquely Mexican. The Spanish may have brought these elements from the medieval tradition of the Feast of Fools (associated with Carnaval, carne vale, farewell to the flesh), where everything is equal and open to criticism, ridicule, and frivolity. “We are all equal in death and nothing is beyond mockery,” this tradition said. And humor became a part of los Día de Muertos that we know today.
In the latter part of the colonial period, the people began making sugar-candy skulls, brightly decorated with names spelled out in colored sugar, to exchange as tokens of affection among family and friends. They placed them on the Día de Muertos altars along with the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, and the copal that the old ways demanded. They also made toys in the shape of skeletons and little skeleton dolls of clay and papier maché that made fun of people and every sort of human activity. They made playfulness part of the tradition and took from death a little of its sting.
Another thing that the Spaniards brought was the pasquín (mocking verses scrawled on walls to which passing readers added their own lines and comments). Between 1535 and 1539, the first printing press in America was established in Mexico City, and soon pasquines printed on broadsheets were being pasted on the walls of public buildings. These eventually gave rise to the funny verses called calaveras (skulls, also popularly meaning empty-headed fools), often illustrated with caricatures, through which the people freely criticized and mocked the rich and powerful who ruled their lives. The calavera became a part of the Día de Muertos.
Corridos (ballads in the oral tradition whose themes often focus on current events) had grown to be the popular form of political expression by the time Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, and by the late nineteenth century, the corrido and the calavera had almost completely replaced the pasquín. Small print shops throughout the country published the most popular corridos and calaveras on broadsides of colored paper, disseminating information and ideas against the authoritarian Porfirio Díaz regime. The best-known of these presses was that of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City, made famous by the witty poet Constancio S. Suárez and by José Guadalupe Posada, a talented engraver. Posada illustrated the verses written by Suárez, who succinctly put the truth which is the soul of the calavera:
--------------------It is a most sincere truth
--------------------that this adage makes us see:
--------------------only one who was never born
--------------------can never a death’s-head be.
Día de Muertos in the Twentieth Century
These are some of the elements of los Días de Muertos inherited by the twentieth century. With the Revolution of 1910, modern Mexican art exploded into its own, and the young artists repudiated not only the French orientation of the Díaz era (1877–1911) but their own Spanish heritage, idealizing their indigenous past. For the young artists of the Revolution (José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueriros among them), Posada was the father of modern Mexican art and quoted his images in their own work. Indeed, many of Posada’s images (such as his Calavera Catrina) took on the nature of icons that are now hard to separate from los Días de Muertos.
Rediscovering and reclaiming their Indian roots and folk arts and festivals, modern Mexican writers, musicians, dancers, and graphic artists created works that burst with images, sounds, colors of dazzling brilliance and originality. But for the Indians, Mexico was a country colonized for four hundred years, its dominant language and culture European; what the writers, musicians, and painters accomplished was to foment a new respect for, even to romanticize, indigenous custom and form, not adopt them as an integral part of their own lives. The artisans of the people continued to produce the ever popular Día de Muertos sugar skulls and toys, of course—and the artists and the new and growing educated middle class avidly collected them as arte popular (folk art.)
To simply see the tradition of the Mexican los Días de Muertos as a quaint folk custom does it little justice. It has always been a religious practice alive with its own cosmology, vibrant with spiritual and emotional meaning for the people who participate in it. At its center, Día de Muertos is full of reverence, sorrow, and prayer; the levity is more peripheral, an aside. Without their core of belief, of spiritual and emotional power, Día de Muertos would hardly have survived to our day, much less inspired such art.
After the revolution, Día de Muertos lived on in Mexico among the indigenous populations close to their pre-Hispanic roots; thus it was a holiday of the poor, and most especially the rural poor. The urban middle class rarely put up Days of the Dead altars except as quaint displays of “indigenous” art. On All Souls Day, they might visit the cemetery and place flowers on the grave, perhaps attend Mass, but Día de Muertos was not modern, and the tradition was certainly more Indian than they would ever want to be. It was one thing to show off indigenous art, another to be Indian. That the urbanite Frida Kahlo affected Tehuana dresses and wore strings of heavy, pre-Hispanic green-stone about her slender neck did not make her Indian.
As Mexico became more urban and more industrialized, at least in the major cities, Día de Muertos became more secularized. Were it not for the indigenous communities faithful to their traditions, Día de Muertos might have gradually become merely a colorful Indian custom, a quaint though cherished symbol of national identity.
Día de Muertos in the United States
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, there flared up a new interest from an unexpected quarter. United States intervention in Viet-Nam had flared into a full-blown war in which many citizens of Mexican descent saw the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846-48) reflected. At the same time, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Farm Workers Movement led by César E. Chávez under the banner of Guadalupe went into full strike in the vineyards of California. These two events galvanized the identity of the young U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who began calling themselves Chicanos.
The quest for and formation of an identity is always a spiritual matter, a moral matter, a matter of empowerment, especially in a society which exerts such pressures to conform and assimilate. In 1970 the Chicano Moratorium against the Viet-Nam War coalesced a political and cultural movement with its own music, literature, and graphic arts, especially the mural. Walls in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout the U.S. blazed into color and images that drew inspiration from the mural movement of Mexico. They extensively quoted the work of Posada, Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Kahlo, and incorporated such indigenist images as Sun Stones, eagles devouring serpents, plumed snakes, Guadalupes, and Zapatista campesinos. Chicano art, rooted in Mexican culture but of the United States, was something all its own.
In the late 1960s, some teachers of Mexican descent with ties to Día de Muertos tradition began to introduce it in the classroom. Also in the early 1970s, the Galería de la Raza, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, the Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts, and other galleries in San Francisco began to mount Día de Muertos exhibitions, inviting artists to create ofrendas. The same occurred in Los Angeles and quickly spread to other cities, such as Chicago, that have large Chicano and Mexican immigrant populations. And in the mid 1970s, El Teatro Campesino performed satirical skits with calavera characters for the workers in the fields. The richly layered Día de Muertos customs that were traditionally practiced in that area to the south known as Mesoamerica, where the high cultures flourished, were not familiar in Aztlan (northern Mexico and what had become the U.S. Southwest), where native cultures were more nomadic. There the ofrenda was not customary, and up to this point only appeared when people who had immigrated from the south put them up. But now Día de Muertos ofrendas and exhibitions began to appear in New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere in the Southwest.
New Expressions for Día de Muertos
Avid to reclaim their Mexican—especially Mexican Indian—roots, Chicanos took the ofrenda, the element at the core of Día de Muertos, from its original matrix and made it into a new art form. Very few of the artists participating in these exhibitions had lived Día de Muertos traditions, though some elders and recent immigrants from south-central Mexico were drawn upon to create “traditional” ofrendas. These, even if they may not have included all the elements prescribed by tradition—the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, the sugar skulls, the copal—did include an altar bearing offerings of some sort, as well as traditional incidental decorative elements like papel picado and streamers, and, if the ofrenda honored a particular person, photographs and personal mementos.
Though “traditional” ofrendas were occasionally exhibited in Mexico in museums and public spaces, often under the auspices of FONART (the National Fund for the Encouragement of Crafts) as samples of arte popular, the ofrenda had been, up to this point, solely a sacred and private expression of devotion and memorial created for the home, sometimes for the family tomb, occasionally for the church.
The intimate and devotional family ofrenda now became a point of departure for more conscious works of art, giving way to public statements, often political in nature, incorporating the sociopolitical function of the calavera with the religious form of the ofrenda. It is true that many artists considered their work sacred art; they often created ofrendas to honor dead family, friends, or public figures, and they ritually consecrated the gallery space and the ofrenda by smudging with copal or sage. But the religious, sacred aspects became more broadly defined; the emphasis was on fine art. This was a new art form, a variation of installation art. In the context of the gallery, the term “ofrenda” is now popularly used for any installation on the theme of death. The intent of these ofrendas as works of art is often not so much to comfort as to disquiet.
This new interpretation of the traditions of Día de Muertos as art for the public very soon exerted its influence in Mexico, and ofrendas of a political nature, honoring public figures and commemorating political events, started to appear with more frequency in such public spaces as galleries, museums, libraries, community centers, and even government buildings. Furthermore, though Día de Muertos in such places as Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz had always attracted visitors, popularization of the holiday in the U.S. tremendously increased the number of tourists to Mexico during these days so that the cemeteries were overrun with urbanites and foreigners toting cameras.
Processions were another notable development in the United States. A procession sponsored by Self-Help Graphics in Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles that started in the 1970s, and another, sponsored by Galería de la Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District in the 1980s, both became so popular that, with the novelty of costumes and samba bands, they were more like Halloween events or carnaval parades than traditional honoring of the dead. Interestingly, in the city of Oaxaca since the seventies, comparsas, skull-masked and skeleton-costumed bands, probably influenced by the U.S. Halloween, began to gain prominence in Día de Muertos celebrations, adding an element of carnaval to the feast.
In Mexico, the Days of the Dead are still observed with deep emotion and spiritual devotion by the many who are heirs to the tradition, as well as others who are taking up the practice. In the United States, whose mainstream culture lacks a holiday devoted to the dead, many are borrowing Día de Muertos traditions, respectfully adapting them to their own needs and circumstances, putting up altars every year to honor their dead in the privacy of their homes . . .
Los Día de Muertos tradition, as it is practiced in Mexico, comes down to us from the shades of our pre-European past, a vital tradition laden with historical, religious, and spiritual meaning. It will change as it continues to be popularized and as the cultures that nurture and maintain it struggle to keep their identities in the face of the demands of the twenty-first century with its push towards globalization not only of economics but of culture . . .*
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Pre-Hispanic MexicoAwed by the eternal cycle of life and death and the need of sacrifice to assure the continuation of life, ages before the Spaniards came to the Americas, the peoples of ancient Mexico, particularly the Nahuas, of which the Mexica (generally called Aztecs) formed a part, celebrated the dead in a great feast quite different from the one we know today. It began on August 8, by the European calendar, and they called it Micailhuitontli, Small Feast of the Dead, to honor their dead children. On that morning, the people went to the forest and cut down a tall, straight tree which they brought to the gates of the city. There, for twenty days, they blessed the tree and stripped it of its bark.During those twenty days, they did ritual, sacrificed, feasted, danced, and made offerings to the dead of cempoalxochitl flowers, fire, copal, food, and drink. Then, on August 28, which they called Huey Micailhuitl (Great Feast of the Dead), in honor of their adult dead, they made a large figure of a bird perched on flowering branches out of amaranth seed dough, painted it brightly, and decorated it with colorful feathers. They fixed the dough bird to the end of the tree trunk, raised it in the courtyard of the Great Temple, and honored it with more offerings, singing, copal, dances, sacrifice, and bloodletting.
One hour before sunset, the young noblemen climbed the pole to bring down the figure of the bird. The youths who reached the top first and brought down the dough figure were much honored. They broke it up and passed it out among the people to eat; they called it “flesh of the god.” Then they brought down the pole and broke it up, and everyone tried to take a piece of it back to their homes because it was holy.
The pole and its god-bird on flowering branches must have stood for the mythical Tree of Life that grew in the earthly paradise of Tamoanchan. The blood of sacrifice nourished the Tree of Life, just as Quetzalcoatl, Plumed Serpent, God of Life, shed his blood to create humankind. The ritual of the pole and the flesh of the god honored the fact that life cannot be separated from death; we live and die, and our deaths are the price of living.
Composed of both joy and pain, life is brief and uncertain, its end a question that disquiets the heart. Many poems addressing this sad truth were composed by the Nahua poets, the most famous of whom was Nezahualcoyotl, King of Texcoco, who said:
------------------Is it true that one lives on earth?
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!
------------------Even the precious stones chip away,
------------------even the gold falls apart,
------------------even the precious feathers tear.
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!
The peoples of ancient Mexico created wonderful pieces of sacred art in which life and death are united. The greatest, perhaps, is the great Coatlicue (now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City), who was at one and the same time terrifying and life-giving, the goddess of life and death, Earth-Mother of the gods, of humankind: mother of all. They carved statues depicting Quetzalcoatl, God of Life, on one side, and on the other, Mictlantecuhtli, God of Death. They painted pictures of the gods of life and death indivisibly joined together, such as the ones in the Borgia Codex, one of the very few of their marvelous books that survive.When someone died, a piece of green-stone was placed in his or her mouth to take the place of the heart. The people believed that most of the dead went to a gray region of shadows called Mictlan (Land of the Dead), led by a little dog through nine levels of trials. Only the warriors killed in battle, the victims of sacrifice, and the women who had died in childbirth went to the realm of the Sun. Suicides and those who drowned, or were struck by lightning, or died of certain illnesses associated with water went to the place of Tlaloc, God of the Rain. Children who died young went to the realm of Ometeotl, Lord/Lady of Duality, to be nursed by a tree in a place called Chichihualcuauhco.
Mexico under Spain
These were the beliefs and the customs of the natives when the Spaniards came to Mexico and conquered Tenochtitlan and the Mexica empire in 1521. Along with the horse, the gun, and disease, the Europeans brought a new religion, Christianity. They called the people Indians and forced them to convert.
Some of the Christian beliefs were similar to the ancient ones: the Sun had demanded bleeding hearts torn from sacrificial victims to pay for life; God the Father required the bloody sacrifice of his only Son to pay for salvation. Coatlicue had conceived the god Huitzilopochtli without intercourse with a man; the virgin Mary had also miraculously conceived Jesus. The Indians ate the “flesh of the god’’ in a piece of amaranth dough; Christians ate the flesh of Christ in a piece of unleavened bread. Indians did penance; so did the Christians.
But some of the Christian beliefs were entirely new to the natives, such as the notion of a place where the dead went as either reward or punishment for how they had lived their lives: a happy heaven, with angels, saints, and gods (as they perceived the Trinity) and a painful hell, full of demons and evildoers. The new Mother of God was not terrible, as Coatlicue was, but sweet and demure as she stood on the black obsidian moon in front of the sun and wore the starry night sky for her cloak. Tonantzin, Mother of Us All, was now called Our Lady of Guadalupe, an Arabic place-name of Moorish Spain.In spite of their conversion, the native people kept their ancient customs as best they could by adapting them to the demands of the new religion, transferring the old celebrations to the holidays of the Christian calendar. They were forced to change the rituals of their days of the dead but kept as their core the ofrenda (the altar with offerings to the dead). And they still grew (and do to this day) the yellow cempoalxochitl, the cempoal, marigold, known popularly as flor de muerto (flower of the dead), which they used especially to honor the dead. They transferred the two Feasts of the Dead to the Christian Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. (Long before, between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Christian Church itself had set the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls on the first and second of November, converting the ancient European Celtic feast of the harvest and of the dead, Samhain [sá-win], into a Christian holiday.)
The melding of two cultures
Spanish art offered images of death, similar to those the natives knew, in the martyred Christ and saints, and memento mori (“remember that you die”) images of skulls from the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death. The conquered people merged their old symbols with those of the conquerors. The indigenous cross of the four cardinal points became the Christian cross. The Tree of Life came to refer to the Garden of Eden as well, and eventually gave rise to the beautiful clay árboles de la vida with birds on flowering branches that we know today. The amaranth-dough offerings were replaced by the popular wheat pan de muerto (bread of the dead).
One great change in the Spanish colonial period was the evolvement of humor and whimsy that we today associate with los Día de Muertos and that make the holiday so uniquely Mexican. The Spanish may have brought these elements from the medieval tradition of the Feast of Fools (associated with Carnaval, carne vale, farewell to the flesh), where everything is equal and open to criticism, ridicule, and frivolity. “We are all equal in death and nothing is beyond mockery,” this tradition said. And humor became a part of los Día de Muertos that we know today.
In the latter part of the colonial period, the people began making sugar-candy skulls, brightly decorated with names spelled out in colored sugar, to exchange as tokens of affection among family and friends. They placed them on the Día de Muertos altars along with the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, and the copal that the old ways demanded. They also made toys in the shape of skeletons and little skeleton dolls of clay and papier maché that made fun of people and every sort of human activity. They made playfulness part of the tradition and took from death a little of its sting.
Another thing that the Spaniards brought was the pasquín (mocking verses scrawled on walls to which passing readers added their own lines and comments). Between 1535 and 1539, the first printing press in America was established in Mexico City, and soon pasquines printed on broadsheets were being pasted on the walls of public buildings. These eventually gave rise to the funny verses called calaveras (skulls, also popularly meaning empty-headed fools), often illustrated with caricatures, through which the people freely criticized and mocked the rich and powerful who ruled their lives. The calavera became a part of the Día de Muertos.
Corridos (ballads in the oral tradition whose themes often focus on current events) had grown to be the popular form of political expression by the time Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, and by the late nineteenth century, the corrido and the calavera had almost completely replaced the pasquín. Small print shops throughout the country published the most popular corridos and calaveras on broadsides of colored paper, disseminating information and ideas against the authoritarian Porfirio Díaz regime. The best-known of these presses was that of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City, made famous by the witty poet Constancio S. Suárez and by José Guadalupe Posada, a talented engraver. Posada illustrated the verses written by Suárez, who succinctly put the truth which is the soul of the calavera:
--------------------It is a most sincere truth
--------------------that this adage makes us see:
--------------------only one who was never born
--------------------can never a death’s-head be.
Día de Muertos in the Twentieth Century
These are some of the elements of los Días de Muertos inherited by the twentieth century. With the Revolution of 1910, modern Mexican art exploded into its own, and the young artists repudiated not only the French orientation of the Díaz era (1877–1911) but their own Spanish heritage, idealizing their indigenous past. For the young artists of the Revolution (José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueriros among them), Posada was the father of modern Mexican art and quoted his images in their own work. Indeed, many of Posada’s images (such as his Calavera Catrina) took on the nature of icons that are now hard to separate from los Días de Muertos.Rediscovering and reclaiming their Indian roots and folk arts and festivals, modern Mexican writers, musicians, dancers, and graphic artists created works that burst with images, sounds, colors of dazzling brilliance and originality. But for the Indians, Mexico was a country colonized for four hundred years, its dominant language and culture European; what the writers, musicians, and painters accomplished was to foment a new respect for, even to romanticize, indigenous custom and form, not adopt them as an integral part of their own lives. The artisans of the people continued to produce the ever popular Día de Muertos sugar skulls and toys, of course—and the artists and the new and growing educated middle class avidly collected them as arte popular (folk art.)
To simply see the tradition of the Mexican los Días de Muertos as a quaint folk custom does it little justice. It has always been a religious practice alive with its own cosmology, vibrant with spiritual and emotional meaning for the people who participate in it. At its center, Día de Muertos is full of reverence, sorrow, and prayer; the levity is more peripheral, an aside. Without their core of belief, of spiritual and emotional power, Día de Muertos would hardly have survived to our day, much less inspired such art.
After the revolution, Día de Muertos lived on in Mexico among the indigenous populations close to their pre-Hispanic roots; thus it was a holiday of the poor, and most especially the rural poor. The urban middle class rarely put up Days of the Dead altars except as quaint displays of “indigenous” art. On All Souls Day, they might visit the cemetery and place flowers on the grave, perhaps attend Mass, but Día de Muertos was not modern, and the tradition was certainly more Indian than they would ever want to be. It was one thing to show off indigenous art, another to be Indian. That the urbanite Frida Kahlo affected Tehuana dresses and wore strings of heavy, pre-Hispanic green-stone about her slender neck did not make her Indian.
As Mexico became more urban and more industrialized, at least in the major cities, Día de Muertos became more secularized. Were it not for the indigenous communities faithful to their traditions, Día de Muertos might have gradually become merely a colorful Indian custom, a quaint though cherished symbol of national identity.
Día de Muertos in the United States
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, there flared up a new interest from an unexpected quarter. United States intervention in Viet-Nam had flared into a full-blown war in which many citizens of Mexican descent saw the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846-48) reflected. At the same time, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Farm Workers Movement led by César E. Chávez under the banner of Guadalupe went into full strike in the vineyards of California. These two events galvanized the identity of the young U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who began calling themselves Chicanos.
The quest for and formation of an identity is always a spiritual matter, a moral matter, a matter of empowerment, especially in a society which exerts such pressures to conform and assimilate. In 1970 the Chicano Moratorium against the Viet-Nam War coalesced a political and cultural movement with its own music, literature, and graphic arts, especially the mural. Walls in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout the U.S. blazed into color and images that drew inspiration from the mural movement of Mexico. They extensively quoted the work of Posada, Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Kahlo, and incorporated such indigenist images as Sun Stones, eagles devouring serpents, plumed snakes, Guadalupes, and Zapatista campesinos. Chicano art, rooted in Mexican culture but of the United States, was something all its own.
In the late 1960s, some teachers of Mexican descent with ties to Día de Muertos tradition began to introduce it in the classroom. Also in the early 1970s, the Galería de la Raza, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, the Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts, and other galleries in San Francisco began to mount Día de Muertos exhibitions, inviting artists to create ofrendas. The same occurred in Los Angeles and quickly spread to other cities, such as Chicago, that have large Chicano and Mexican immigrant populations. And in the mid 1970s, El Teatro Campesino performed satirical skits with calavera characters for the workers in the fields. The richly layered Día de Muertos customs that were traditionally practiced in that area to the south known as Mesoamerica, where the high cultures flourished, were not familiar in Aztlan (northern Mexico and what had become the U.S. Southwest), where native cultures were more nomadic. There the ofrenda was not customary, and up to this point only appeared when people who had immigrated from the south put them up. But now Día de Muertos ofrendas and exhibitions began to appear in New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere in the Southwest.
New Expressions for Día de Muertos
Avid to reclaim their Mexican—especially Mexican Indian—roots, Chicanos took the ofrenda, the element at the core of Día de Muertos, from its original matrix and made it into a new art form. Very few of the artists participating in these exhibitions had lived Día de Muertos traditions, though some elders and recent immigrants from south-central Mexico were drawn upon to create “traditional” ofrendas. These, even if they may not have included all the elements prescribed by tradition—the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, the sugar skulls, the copal—did include an altar bearing offerings of some sort, as well as traditional incidental decorative elements like papel picado and streamers, and, if the ofrenda honored a particular person, photographs and personal mementos.
The intimate and devotional family ofrenda now became a point of departure for more conscious works of art, giving way to public statements, often political in nature, incorporating the sociopolitical function of the calavera with the religious form of the ofrenda. It is true that many artists considered their work sacred art; they often created ofrendas to honor dead family, friends, or public figures, and they ritually consecrated the gallery space and the ofrenda by smudging with copal or sage. But the religious, sacred aspects became more broadly defined; the emphasis was on fine art. This was a new art form, a variation of installation art. In the context of the gallery, the term “ofrenda” is now popularly used for any installation on the theme of death. The intent of these ofrendas as works of art is often not so much to comfort as to disquiet.
This new interpretation of the traditions of Día de Muertos as art for the public very soon exerted its influence in Mexico, and ofrendas of a political nature, honoring public figures and commemorating political events, started to appear with more frequency in such public spaces as galleries, museums, libraries, community centers, and even government buildings. Furthermore, though Día de Muertos in such places as Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz had always attracted visitors, popularization of the holiday in the U.S. tremendously increased the number of tourists to Mexico during these days so that the cemeteries were overrun with urbanites and foreigners toting cameras.
Processions were another notable development in the United States. A procession sponsored by Self-Help Graphics in Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles that started in the 1970s, and another, sponsored by Galería de la Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District in the 1980s, both became so popular that, with the novelty of costumes and samba bands, they were more like Halloween events or carnaval parades than traditional honoring of the dead. Interestingly, in the city of Oaxaca since the seventies, comparsas, skull-masked and skeleton-costumed bands, probably influenced by the U.S. Halloween, began to gain prominence in Día de Muertos celebrations, adding an element of carnaval to the feast.
* ------*------ *
In Mexico, the Days of the Dead are still observed with deep emotion and spiritual devotion by the many who are heirs to the tradition, as well as others who are taking up the practice. In the United States, whose mainstream culture lacks a holiday devoted to the dead, many are borrowing Día de Muertos traditions, respectfully adapting them to their own needs and circumstances, putting up altars every year to honor their dead in the privacy of their homes . . .
Los Día de Muertos tradition, as it is practiced in Mexico, comes down to us from the shades of our pre-European past, a vital tradition laden with historical, religious, and spiritual meaning. It will change as it continues to be popularized and as the cultures that nurture and maintain it struggle to keep their identities in the face of the demands of the twenty-first century with its push towards globalization not only of economics but of culture . . .*
by Rafael Jesús González
[Excerpted from the introduction of the book
El Corazón de la Muerte (English & Spanish),
Oakland Museum of California
and Heyday Books 2005;
copyrights of the Oakland Museum of California.
Reproduction in any form for commercial use is prohibited
without explicit permission of the Oakland Museum of California]
* Some U.S., Canadian, and other foreign artists in such centers as San Miguel de Allende are now producing los Días de Muertos “folk art” for export to the U.S. and abroad. Stores of arts and crafts from around the world, such as Global Exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area, now sell little death-figures and glass boxes from Perú and Bolivia painted with Posada images, bamboo curtains from Viet-Nam painted with Posada images, wood stamping-blocks from Nepal with Mexican milagro images, and skull-shaped glass votive-candle holders from China. And of course more and more artifacts, calendars, and books with los Días de Muertos themes are being produced in the United States.[Excerpted from the introduction of the book
El Corazón de la Muerte (English & Spanish),
Oakland Museum of California
and Heyday Books 2005;
copyrights of the Oakland Museum of California.
Reproduction in any form for commercial use is prohibited
without explicit permission of the Oakland Museum of California]
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