NOTES
“I don’t remember when I stopped praying to God to make me white.
I had stopped lacing my fingers together at the side of the bed nightly, hoping I would wake up with blue eyes and blonde hair.”
—Emily Prado
The Fifth Sun,
A New History of The Aztecs
Camilla Townsend
The Fifth Sun captures a summarized history of pre-contact Mexico, and a detailed account of the arrival of Spaniards, specifically Hernan Cortez using the writing and documentation of the first Nahuatl scholars who were the first to translate their own spoken language into written language using Spanish language and western letterforms.
One of the most prolific of these historians is Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin (1579, Amecameca, Chalco—1660, Mexico City), known simply as Chimalpahin, was a Nahua annalist from Chalco. Chimalpahin learned how to read and write in Spanish by Catholic Friars to increase the effectiveness of the continued conversion of the native Mexicans into Catholics. Like many of the young boys taught by the friars, Chimalpahin would take his lessons home with him and transcribe oral histories from the elders who experienced first contact with the Spaniards, and survived the violent colonization of their land.
This “new” lens of history paints an image of a thriving, beautiful, and sophisticated Mexica society, whose conquering and exploitation had more to do with differet social values and behaviors, and geographical coincidences that led to the Spaniards obtaining a deadly advantage of weaponry and biological immunity. This is a fresh perspective when compared to the Christian/ Catholic narrative —so familiar to myself, and many Chicanos—which describes the Mexican natives as canabalistic barbarians and the European colonizers as a people chosen by God to save from the native Mexicans from their own savagery.
The description of the Encomienda system in the book makes clear that while this system is not the same as Chattel Slalvery, it was still a brutal expoitation of native labor. Again, the narrative here is quite different than tthe one we are often taught. Because Queen Isabella forbade slavery, the Encomienda system was modeled after a feudal relationship in which the natives received physical protection from “waring tribes” and “spiritual salvation” in exchange for unpaid labor. While they may not have been considered a commodity to be bought and sold, the Native “subjects” who were stubborn, or resisted the system were severely punished, or put to death. Encomiendas were established by the Spanish in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Philippines.
The truth of this system is still so burried that you will often find products from these areas branded with the name La Encomienda, most recedntly I found a chocolate company who sold the story of Mexican xocolat in the their brand story describing the Encomienda system as “friendly” and “mutually beneficial.” I emailed them to tell them how wrong this narrative was, and they removed the content from their web page.
The most illuminating metaphor in the book came when Townsend described the societies of early 1500s Mexico—the Mexica, Yucatec Maya, Toltec and Purepecha—as extremely sophisticated people with intricate social systems, political systems, rich artisanal and historical practices that were comperaple to the Sumerians—adding that this meeting of cultures was like unleashing the high renaissance Europeans on Ancient Sumeria. The native Maxicans could not defend themselves against the guns, germs, and steel of 1500’s Spanish conquistadors.
Another fun fact here is that before the land was terraformed by colonization, 1 in every 10 plants on earth could be found (native) to Mexico. Their realtionship to the plant world was a central part of their religous practice, food ways, and medicines. Corn/Maize as we know it was cultivated by Mexica growers over a period of roughly 200 years who selectively bred the plant from a small stalk with a tiny bundle of kerneled seeds roughly the size of a dandelion to the large thick stalk topped with a the ginat cob of corn we know today.
Funeral for Flaca
Emilly Prado
It has been hard at times to imagine where my own writing fits into the literary landscape, and I don’t say this in a pretentious “I’m so weird” kind of way, but more in this is a very new thing for me to be imagining and exploring. I’ve spent so much time in the literary world as a book designer, as a book consumer, and have sat in the marketing meetings where folks hem and haw over what genre a book should be listed in. Finding Kai Cheng Thom’s book was REALLY HARD. In some stores it was catalogued as self-help, in others it was memoir, and in yet another it was listed under poetry.
In the San Fernando Valley we have a book store called Tia Chuchas, where the categories of book stacks are sorted by things like “Indigenous” or “Indie pub” and “Decolonial” the section of memoir and poetry is blended together as if it were curated just to hold the work of Gloria Anzaldua. The space feels more like a record collector’s way of cataloguing than a marketing obsessed book publisher’s way of sorting.
On my recent trip I picked up “Funeral for Flaca” the tite and the artwork immediately resonated. In Mexican culture nicknames are attriuted to physical features, which I learned in the Fifth Sun is a practice that goes all the way back to the Mexica. In Mexica culture children aren’t named until they are ready to enter society as an adult. Until then, they get Nahuatl names that translate to“first daughter, only son,” or some physical feature or personality trait. Flaca/ flaquita is a nickname given to skinny girls, and in the deepest trenches of malinchismo, thinness is a high value posession. “Funeral for Flaca” as a title let me know this was a story of a girl/woman who was ready to bury everything it takes to be Flaca, and the the toll that Flaca takes on so many of us.
Emilly Prado is definitely a home girl. Though she is at least 10 years younger than me, my writing and hers can kick it. I blasted through 3/4 of the book in one day. It was like stepping into a stranger’s home, only to find it as familiar as your own—chanclas piled up by the door, and the air scented with an soft perfume of Fabuloso, Suavitel and freshly made tortillas. Her book chapters are named after formative songs, making the book part memoir and part mixtape. Her growing up story takes place in the 90’s Bay Area of California, where her parents hope that the proximity to whiteness will translate to upward mobility and opportunity for their children. My family made a similar move 150 miles north from National City, CA (the first suburb past the US Mexico border), to Santa Clarita (my High School was the home of the largest KKK rally in Southern California). While for her and I that strategy did come with some of those nice white benefits, the fact that white people will never see us as white—caused a lot of angst, and loneliness.
Emilly’s journey toward forming her own understanding of her unique identity as someone who is not quite like her Mexican born parents, and not quite “American” enough either is the kind of Chicanx experience I had, and the same one I watch my students who are 20+ years younger than me having. Their is a universality for the Pochos, the NoSabos in this experience, and the more we tell our stories, the less lonely we all feel.
Emilly’s stories say out loud, what so many of us are taught by our parents to never say. She discusses her eating disorder, her mental health diagnosis, falling in love for the first time and having your heart broken, making and remaking selves until you find a way to be comfortable in your own skin. Getting in fights, struggling with communicating with family, and finding a song that makes you feel like you are going to be okay.