I chose to title my blog "behold the cities of gold" because it relates to part of my ancestry. Being of mixed heritage, part of my family has origins in Mexico City. In the present day, it is difficult to distinguish if you have ancestry from many cultural groups of the native Indians of mesoamerica of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, but Mexico city is the present city of what used to be the capital of the Aztec empire. So for purposes of choosing a title, the maker's of gold is what some historians believed the Spanish called the Aztec Indians, and I chose it to make reference to part of my cultural heritage. The NAS course looked at Popol Vuh, which is the book if the creation of people from the Mayans, who were close relatives to the Aztecs.
In thinking of the writing assisgnment for next week, I think I am choosing to stay with the Popol Vuh. An interesting theme I find which s is helping me to start my draft is the idea of light and darkness. It was pointed out in class the references in the text about darkness and it raised questions because the creation of the sun and moon had yet to happen. In Christianity, light and dark can refer to good and evil. An example relating the good/evil with light/darkness is found in book two with the trickery the brothers played on the lord's of the "underworld." This shows some prevailance of good over evil which raises my thoughts that Mayans may have shared many beliefs to my own religious ideology.
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Thanks for the good post. We'll be reading some texts that discuss the relationship between chicano and indigenous identity, so I'll be excited to hear your thoughts on that.
ReplyDeleteYour idea about the Popol Vuh sounds like it will be a good paper. I wonder if the issue of light and dark is similar to our common perceptions of the binary between light/dark and good/evil or if it is more complex. It seems that lots of the characters and issues have both light and dark sides, but the fact that this all takes place before the nights and days makes it even more complex. I'm excited to read your paper draft!
I really like the title of your blog; you seem to know so much about Mexican Culture. i know what you mean when you say that its hard to distinguish if you have ancestry from the different Indians of Mesoamerica. I don’t really know much about my ancestors and I wish I did.
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