MC Quixote

Soy de Juárez Norte / I'm from North Juárez (Reborn) Part 7

North Juárez is the place I think I was born. Why? Because I can't believe my dad or my mom about my birthplace. My dad insists I was born in Portland, Oregon and my mom tells me I was born in Mexico City. I think I have birth certificates from both places. So why make it more confusing by adding another birthplace? Maybe claiming a made-up place of origin seems less loaded.

Mom says that I was born in the "Navel of the Moon." I know she got that term from her side of the family, The Aztecas. This is what I call my mom's parents; they've been "Born-Again Aztecs" since the 1970's. They still go down to the Zócolo and the Basilica with their feathers and shells covering their bodies and dance with the "Danzones" for hours and hours. I think it's kind of cool, how many grandkids can claim something like this about their Abuelos?

I call my Aztec Grandma "Abuela Adela". She's taught me that Mexico in Aztec means, "Ombligo de la Luna" / "Navel of the Moon". Abuela always talks about how Mexico City is magical, "Mejico Majico", "Mejico Majico", it's like her mantra.

I've asked her, "Why the navel of the moon?" and she's given me a lot of different answers. She's talked about how Mexico City is located in a special place; a place that's been marked by the birthing of the planet. I remember her saying something else about how the location of Mexico City lies on a portal between the visible world / life (world of the sun) and the invisible world / death (world of the moon).

Hmmm, a portal. In some way I think this portal is moving north as more and more of the Aztec blood goes North (both migrating and dying). The Aztecs did do human sacrifice to please their gods and thousands of people are being sacrificed in Juárez every year (over 7,000, and not just young girls, in the last three years). So, I think the navel of the moon has moved to a place I call North Juárez, and this is what I'm claiming of as my birthplace. It's somewhere between Salt Lake City and Mexico City.

By claiming North Juárez as my hometown, I've become an outlaw in both Mexico and the U.S. I guess I've developed a sort of soft spot for some outlaws. Ironically, both Mexico and the United States have quite a few "outlaws" in their histories.

The first Europeans to hit the American continent were rogue outlaws in the "New World". The stories start with Cristobal Colon; they call him Christopher Columbus up North. I read that he transported more slaves across the Atlantic than any one person, the numbers are around 5000 (I read it in Lies My Teacher Taught Me, a book my teacher Mr. C had in his classroom).

Colon becomes an "outlaw/hero" while enslaving thousands of people and he even gets a holiday. Ironically, it seems like immigrants today are demonized for basically choosing to become "low-wage slaves". And in this capacity, they end up doing most of the grunt work in the U.S.A. and then we get blamed for all sorts of problems: crime, drugs, disease, etc. Blaming the weakest and most vulnerable just seems like typical bullying tactics to me.

And in some parts of Latin America people celebrate "Dia de la Raza" to mark the day Colon landed in the Americas. I don't get this take either. The Spanish destroyed the indigenous cultures in Mexico by integrating with the indigenous, a different method of conquering a people than the outright extermination of native peoples that took place both north and south of Mexico. With the U.S. and Argentina being clear examples of genocides committed against native people.

Cortés is another example of an "outlaw / hero". He's largely responsible for the rapid destruction of the Aztec Capital, present day Mexico City, what the Aztecas called Tenochtitlan, the center of Mexico (The Navel of the Moon). He was a tricky outlaw; and the way he used Malinche shows his manipulative and abusive tactics to get the job done.

Malinche was actually named "Malinalli", born on the day of this Aztec goddess of grass. In some ways, she's the true mother of Mexico. It's interesting to look at Malinalli's life symbolically.