Dear Readers: My columna a couple of weeks ago about whether Aztec savagery influences violence in Mexico today drew muchos responses, both bueno and malo. Here are two:
Dear Mexican: I enjoy reading all your replies and was thinking about the last reply you wrote about the violence/Aztec blood question posed to you. I grew up in Huntington Beach and am a “brown man” (Iranian decent). I’m currently in Shitzona finishing up pharmacy school and made an interesting (to me) observation today at a gas station. The reason Mexicans are the way they are “sketchy” or “violent” or whatever the stereotype is due to the level of treatment they receive from their respective environment. I’ve played lots o’ fútbol back home and worked lots of jobs where I worked side-by-side with Mexicans. What I have found is that while back home, the Mexicans still had some of Napoleanesque machismo complex complete with super pervy sexual (toma, güey, etc.) behavior. Here in this hellhole joke of a state, the Mexicans are about double the classic stereotypes that I encountered back home.
It got me thinking, and what I’ve found is that the pinche güeros here are about seven to 10 times more ignorant, and this naturally lends itself to overt racism. While I grew up in bro-y, stars-and-stripes, surf Nazi punk HB, AZ seems to have beat conservative Orange County over in terms of its discrimination (as everyone knows). This donkey’s ass level of ignorance results in a level of treatment from the white ruling class that is extremely cold, condescending, rude, arrogant and downright oppressive to the minority class which in this case is overwhelmingly Mexican. This level of intolerance of la raza I feel is what develops the combative nature of the Mexican. While this is a very simple observation, I wanted to get your thoughts on it, as I have always been very bewildered by some of the actions of the Mexicans I have interacted with throughout life.
Stuck in Shitzona
Dear Persie: You’re referring to internalized oppression, the sociological observation that minority groups end up believing and acting out the very stereotypes that the dominant culture imposes on them. Such pathologies usually manifest themselves in long-established minority cultures, though; in the case of recent Mexican immigrants, blame any fulfilled stereotypes on the fact that most foreign men overcompensate their machismo to mask their pain of living among Know Nothings—and if you don’t believe me, look at Marco Rubio.
You missed an opportunity to correct a misunderstanding about them in your reply to Puzzled by Narco Violence when he describes the Aztec as “notorious butchers and cannibals.” Yes, human sacrifice was practiced by Mesoamerican cultures like the Mexica, but in the context of religious ceremonies they believed to be necessary to appease their gods so that the universe would not come to an end. It was part of their belief system and was performed by priests in a very strict ritual and although is was done on a vast public scale, the goal was to recall the spiritual justification for the empire by its subjects. In that respect, they were not much different from their European counterparts, where public executions drew huge crowds and where the goal was to reassert the sovereign’s divine power after it had been injured by a criminal act. The important thing is that neither society should be judged by its brutality and that in their appetite for death as spectacle they were not fundamentally different. (On the subject of cannibalism, I would remind the writer that recent evidence has proved that it was practiced in Jamestown, Virginia by the pilgrims).
Naco de Neza
Dear Wab: In other words, the Aztecs were notorious butchers and cannibals. Gracias for clearing that up!
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2013.
I just read Bernal Diaz’s book, The Conquest of New Spain, in which he describes the human sacrifice priests.
“They wore their hair very long, down to the waist, with some even reaching down to the feet, covered with blood and so matted together that it could not be separated, and their ears were cut to pieces by way of sacrifice, and they stank like sulfur, and they had another bad smell like carrion, and as they said, and we learnt that it was true, these priests were the sons of chiefs and they abstained from women, but they indulged in the cursed practice of sodomy.”
In comparing this information to current “scientific” interpretation, the eldest sons of Aztec rulers inherited all property and became chiefs. Younger sons were encouraged to become human sacrifice priests. So we see that eldest sons were pre-disposed to be heterosexual, and younger sons were pre-disposed to be homosexual. Something in their genetics, no doubt. Even more baffling is what happened after the conquest. Cortez told the Aztec leaders that he was sent by the king of Spain to stop all human sacrifices and sexual perversions, so after the conquest the human sacrifice priests cut their waist long hair, and blended in with the rest of the population, if not, they were executed by the Spaniards. This would seem to indicate that homosexuals of that time could stop being homosexual if threatened with death, unlike the ones today, who seem to go the other way and jump off bridges or otherwise commit suicide all over the country if they are persecuted for being homosexual.
Perhaps you could give the Mexican perspective on this. Having been a younger son myself, I think some of these Aztec younger sons might have wanted to be something other than human sacrifice priests and homosexuals, and the Mexicans I have worked with have a sign about homosexuality that involves striking the heart a couple of times with their fist to indicate their displeasure with the practice. Do you think this dates back to the Aztecs?
I don’t know what troubles me MOST about this ^ Post (rbwinn)… Your ‘feigned’ supposed-interest
and pseudo-knowledge of the Aztec Civilization as to it’s Ritualistic Sacrificial Ceremonies OR – Your somewhat Convoluted Connecting of this Glorious Culture to a 21st Century-Homophobic
SLUR…I SUGGEST You Attempt to Dissect the ‘mystery’ of ‘Closeted’ Clergy here in America—the likes of Ted Haggard, Eddie Long and a host laundry-list of self-hating / schizophrenic Dual-Life degenerates…Don’t leave out the Mormons!
MGTRRZ Sorry to get you all upset if you are a homosexual, MG. Please do not do anything stupid like jumping off from a bridge. Suicide is a permanent thing. My question was specifically about the Mexican sign for saying someone is a homosexual, striking the heart a couple of times with the fist. I have observed this among Mexicans I have worked with, particularly among the ones from Mexico.
Wonderful you would think the Aztecs had a Glorious culture, but I think the Spaniards improved it by getting rid of the human sacrifices. Of course, the Aztecs sometimes sacrificed a thousand captured members of other tribes in a day at their capital city, which would not really compare in numbers with modern human sacrifices in the form of abortions, but all in all, most people even today agree that it was a disgusting practice. Cortez once remarked to Montezuma that he could not understand how someone as intelligent and fair as Montezuma was in other aspects of his life could be so stupid as to believe in human sacrifices to idols.