The Children of Huitzilopochtli

By Cecy Rendon and Arturo Sánchez

Our spiritual roots have been kept alive inside stories that have been passed from generation to generation. Today those ancient voices are transformed into words and take form into the soul of al Mexicans…
A novel that makes every Mexican spirit proud of who they are, their essence and their past. In a journey through ancient Mexico and the wonders of Tenochtitlan, the characters are faced with the harsh reality of a modern Mexico who constantly discriminates against its indigenous roots.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cecy Rendon
• Release date: Jul 31, 2021

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Spiritual Roots

Lost

Tenochtitlan

The Ancient World’s Wealth

The Gods

The Children of Huitzilopochtli

México

Living the Dream

Epilogue

The Children of

Huitzilopochtli

Cecy Rendón

In collaboration with

Arturo Toxquihua Sánchez

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Joaquin Haces, for working day by day to make Mexico a better place, for sharing your culture so proudly. Thank you for sharing your life with me, for teaching me that love has deeper and more intense levels than I ever imagined... thank you for being my adventure partner... I love you, always.

Thank you Miguel Ángel Rodríguez for your friendship and for that contagious creativity. Thank you for your love for Mexico, for always doing things with the utmost passion and excellence, for being an example and inspiration to Mexicans. And especially thank you for sharing your unique magic to create this book.

Cecy Rendón

Prologue

Speaking or writing about Mexico has been difficult for a long time. There are different ways of understanding who we are, where we come from, where we are going... what unites us.

More difficult in these times of excessive technology, for a few, where news - often false - opinions, memes and now tik toks, are the most common ways of spreading information, clearly unreliable.

Ironically, we live with quite a lot of information and greater uncertainty, and so do modern times. That’s why when Cecy told me about this project I didn’t hesitate for a second to be an accomplice.

There are many factors that we can consider competences to succeed or excel in life. And there are many ways to analyze that success, but in worldly terms let’s say that living carefree with money would be the most relevant. It is the world´s great dream: to end poverty. That is why you must prepare yourself, study or develop an art or craft, propose what you expect and in how long. The point is that others do it too, and so you know that you are not competing against your colleagues, your colony or your state, come on, with your country! You compete with the whole world; everyone wants a piece of the pie. Someone told me, when we were just out of college, not to buy chinaderas (Chinese shit), cause everything they made had bad quality, that cheap is expensive. I answered: At least they are becoming customers in the world, with sales and money they will be able to improve their processes. Time proved me right: they are now the second world power, and it is true that they still have a lot of poverty, but they are reducing it by leaps and bounds.

That’s right, we don’t just have local competition, we also have international competition. And this new way in which we have integrated ourselves as a global village has caught us up badly. So much so, that we developed an exaggeration of what was once Malinchism, not only because we preferred the foreign, but we ended up despising the Mexican. I once heard someone say: It’s not enough for me to know that I’m doing well, I want to know that you’re doing badly. I think it’s the updated version of malinchismo.

And I say it caught us up badly because we were not prepared for the cultural invasion that came from anywhere. From those other countries doing their job: seeking economic improvement for their governed, the so-called economic colonialism. And with this, strengthening their identity and seeking to unite in order to progress.

We do not. Since the Colony there has been no commitment to unite Mexicans. We don’t know how things used to be. Divisions and more divisions, we live pulverized by so many different ideas, while the rest work on creating and seeing what to sell to us.

Xitlally’s trip transported me, by her side, to see a splendid Mexico that I do not remember being taught in school; neither do my elders, my parents, anyone. Nobody told me that this existed. If it is fantasy what matters, just as the Greek Roman gods gave men identity and purpose, we had them too and they were lost with time and lack of clarity. For me, the Aztec or Mayan gods were stories, or worse, they were profane, satanic, because they were not Catholic.

How wonderful to know or imagine that they were not as they said, thank you Arturo Toxquihua for providing the valuable information that you have collected over the years and with which we can know more about us: the Mexicans.

The children of Huitzilopochtli is a journey, an acknowledgement of our values and the best way to meet again as Mexicans".

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Pineda

Spiritual Roots

Our spiritual roots have been kept alive inside stories that have been passed from generation to generation. Today those ancient voices are transformed into words and take form into the soul of all Mexicans...

A short time ago I discovered that my great-great-grandmother was a cahíta healer, a woman with the healing gift, highly respected in her community, who made herbal medicines, cured the sick and especially helped women in childbirth. This was her great calling: midwife.

Baptized as Fermina, known as Mama Nina or simply Manina, she had the sacred mission of guiding the new souls from the spiritual realm to the material world, welcoming them to this earth in their form as newborn human beings.

The wisdom of Mama Nina, her medicines, her spiritual beliefs and most of the ancestral knowledge of her culture were lost over time, the only thing I have been able to rescue exists in the few books written about the Cahíta culture.

That is why when I met Arturo Toxquihua Sanchez we decided to write this book so as not to lose this ancestral knowledge again, the Mexica worldview, our spiritual roots. Because it does not matter Mexico´s region where you are from, nor does it matter the origin of your parents or your grandparents, if you are Mexican you are a child of corn, you are a child of this land and you have the strength and wisdom of the Gods within you.

Cecy Rendón

boton-blanco-Nahuatl

Lost

Maria climbed up desperately, she didn’t care the branches were scratching her skin, her anger was much stronger than her physical pain. After the fight with her boyfriend, she didn’t know what else to do and only thought of climbing the Iztaccihuatl, there was something in the mountain air that always managed to calm her down... but this time it didn’t work, anger flooded her as the words of the fight resounded in her mind. It wasn’t the first time that they were arguing for the same reason, but it was the first time that the differences in perspective escalated to screams; screams that tore her soul apart.

-They are Indians! -Manolo had shouted to some people who ran across the avenue.

-Don’t call them that, you know I don’t like it," answered Maria, who was quite upset.

-There you go again, they’re a bunch of Indians, ignorants" he insisted, raising his voice.

-I’m part Indian, just like you say, and it’s not an insult," she replied in a trembling voice, trying to keep her cool.

-You don’t look like one, that’s why I’m with you," Manolo scoffed.

Something in that haughty, contemptuous laugh made Maria explode. The contempt and racism lived in Mexico towards the Indians had always been present in her life, as everyday reality, almost normal, but lately it had surpassed all the limits of what she could tolerate.

Xitlally Maria was her full name. Her maternal grandmother was a woman of indigenous descent. Most of her roots had been lost over the centuries, but skin, food and language had refused to die in those centuries. She cooked in earthenware pots, made chocolate with a grinder, prepared nixtamal tortillas by hand, used metate for grinding and molcajete for sauces; she had brown and hairless skin and she knew how to speak Nahuatl as her parents had taught her.

Honoring her ancestors and her Mexica roots she was named Xitlally, the literal translation was star, but it actually had a much deeper meaning. Her grandmother believed that she was someone destined to bring light in the midst of darkness, to guide people lost in the night and specially to beautify this world. The village catholic priest did not think much of the idea of such a pagan, almost heretical name, and decided to baptize her as Xitlally Maria. As a child she was called Xitlally at home, but as time went by, she was called only Maria, it was easier and caused fewer derogatory looks and uncomfortable questions about the origin of her name.

Manolo was the great-grandson of a European immigrant on his father’s side and completely Mexican and mestizo on his mother’s side. He was light-skinned, with brown hair and brown eyes, born and raised in Mexico City. Although his features were evidence of centuries and centuries of mixing between different races from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, he believed himself superior to provincial people, people with more indigenous features and people with brown skin. He was not a bad person, but he exhibited the same racism that many Mexicans and foreigners suffer from, obviously without wanting to acknowledge it.

-Well, if you don’t like to hang out with an Indian woman, we’d better end it here," Xitlally concluded with a very firm answer.

-Don’t be like that, it’s a joke," replied Manolo without even looking at her.

-I’m not kidding, I’m sick of your insults and complaints, I’m sick of your contempt, of you always saying that everything in Mexico is wrong.

-You better stop arguing, everything in this country is flawed and we are deep in shit… we live in a fucked up country, full with fucked up people and your stupidity and positivity won’t let you see it.

Manolo was constantly frustrated by all the country problems, he was desperate for corruption, impunity, disorder, crime, pollution, nature exploitation, mediocrity of people around him. Normally at this point in the discussion Maria was silent, but today she was boiling with anger and the words came out of her mouth without her being able - or wanting - to control them.

-And what are you doing to make things better? -she asked in a cry almost drowned out by helplessness.

-Don’t give me any bullshit, this country is hopeless.

-It is because of people like you that we are like this, people who only see the bad and complain without doing anything. I’m sick of it, sick of it! At least I try to do