Leyenda Negra and the Cultural Remix vs. State Sanctioned Separation

I have to say that post-collegiate learning is really amazing…now granted, I’m still ‘in college’ because of my night classes over at CCSF, but I have to say that motivation is really flowing…

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about today…

1. International cell phone calling for 5 cents a minute; I signed up today with T-Mobile to pay a small premium (like 4 bucks a month or something) and then I get 5 cent minutes…now I know you can get cheaper rates with tarjetas de telefono, but the convenience is worth the extra few bucks a month…so I called my Abuelita (who lives in Guadalajara, Mexico) today and we chatted for about 40 mins. Now here’s the best part…I could understand and speak it was just like a game, I mean I really am feeling like I’m getting to KNOW Spanish. It’s super exciting, it’s like gaining a huge access to a culture that really interests me specificaly in regards to the “remix”…more on that later…

2. “Leyenda Negra” or “Black Legend” in English it’s the perception that somehow Spain is more malicious in what they did historically than say France, England, or the United States…the separation, at least to me, is that elimination is different than combination, whether it’s forced or not. Simply put, when Manifest Destiny happend, we (or at least our elected officials) put the Native Americans into government sanctioned areas or reservations. In South Africa, there was government sanctioned Apartheid, the results of which you can see below…

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When the Spanish arrived, soldiers were predominently the ones who traveled (as when virtually any army goes to conquer, they leave the majority of the women and children at home) so the 200 or so that landed were the ones changing that culture at that very instant. I’m reminded of quantum mechanics here, because of the similarity to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which in my interpretation states basically that the moment one investigates a system, the state of that system changes instantly. (Now here’s where it gets super interesting) In terms of the history books that I have been exposed to in the USA, pretty much everything that the folks from Spain did was horrible, they brought dissease, raped, pillaged, and just looked for gold, destroying everything in their paths. Now, here’s the new info from Abuelita…

Right before the Spainish arrived, in North America, specifically in regards to Mexico, the Aztec people lived on an island and for whatever reason the fish started to die, and large numbers of people died of hunger. Unacceptable to the leaders of the tribe, they moved on, looking for a sign, as the legend goes, an eagle on a cactus with a serpent in its talons.

One other important piece of this story is that at the same time, just before the Spanish arrived, the Toltec people had scads of culture…poets, architects, music, dance, and according to the Abuela, even more than the Maya..(very similar to the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula who in 1492, lost their final strong-hold in Granada to the Castillian army from the north.The result of that battle was a people ignorant and supersticious were left of remnants of what existed before…thereby combining the moorish residuals with their own belief systems and culture)

Again, in regard to Mexico, the Aztec people brought their own supersticions and religions and warfare to what is now the Districto Federal or Mexico City (the world’s most populated urban area, I think). A New world equivilent to the “Dark Ages”. So the Aztecs conquered the Toltecs and used them in their sacrifices and they wanted to offer palpatating hearts to the gods…a heart will only beat for 6 seconds after it’s removed, and using obsidian knives, the Aztecs were able to execute this task (pun intended) with the utmost urgency…so needless to say the Toltec people were anxious to change their situation, and actually HELPED OUT the Spanish in order to get their way of life back without fear…little did they know that disease and other factors would reduce the population of all native peoples indescriminately…again Abuela quoted 20 million people down to about 3 million due to Smallpox alone. (I learned a new vocab word here, viruela en Espanol).

Montezuma also made a few errors (again depending on who you read or hear),

• He thought that that the horses and man were one being
• He gave away women as gifts (perhaps the birth of machismo)
• He thought they were vikings (because of light hair and eyes) or related to Catzequatl
• The most important of all, he gave them gifts of GOLD…which made them greedy…they should have just stuck with chocolate and flowers (which are a girls best friend…oh wait, that’s diamonds…and we’re back to African repression by the English *read De Beers*)

When I asked my abuela if the gold and disease didn’t happen would the Spanish still have dominated the culture, and I was suprised that she said yes. She mentioned that they would just keep bringing more and more soldiers over…my thoughts on this are:

• Over history it’s very rare that warriors lose when fighting a *DEFENSIVE* battle that costs a lot of money for the attacking country.
• If they can achieve stalemate, the attackers will withdraw…i.e. the Revolutionary War in the US, Vietnam, and presently Iraq…

So Back to the remix idea, here’s the path I see…
1. Rome defeats Iberia, brings Catholicism and integrates it with pagan traditions in the new land, and people breed, new culture with aspects of both.
2. Castillia kicks out the Moors after 8 centuries in 1492 integrates with Morish archecture (mission style) and music (Flamico) and other traditions. People breed, new culture with aspects of both.
3. Spain goes to “New Spain” brings everyting from before plus integrates with Native culture, specificly ideas of mother earth (Virgin of Guadalupe), and and the woman as an object (Malinche and Machismo)
4. Mexico moves north the first time, is met with cowboys soldiers etc. US steals the land fair and square, becasue of Manifest Destiny says we can, and we derserve it…just like we got Manhattan for some brightly colored beads…Minimal integration happens (as the US takes the stand that intermixing is bad, and it’s much better to only be white *evidence slavery and reservations for Indians*)
5. Which takes us to the present. Culturally Mexico has never forgiven the United States for taking their land, (California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico) and has been trying to re-integrate ever since. The biggest development so far is the proposed installation of the Minute Men on the southern border, (which seems like a short-sited spending of funds when we have a “war on terror” going on)…And as I posted yesterday, there’s so much art that draws on this identity in question…

One other thing to ponder…is the economic impact of this legislation, if there are no more migrant workers, all the people who are advocating for the border protection will have to pay more for house cleaning, field workers, janitors, etc. Plus the costs of soldier’s salries, more fences, legal costs…wouldn’t it make more sense to open the borders for trade both culturally and economically (which I thought we tried to do with NAFTA)?

On a more profound note…how can people be illegal, what is the nature of the entitlement to live in the United States?