Red City on the Ocean

A Moment from the Past - Anacaona's Dream

When Anacaona was nine years old, she and her father, the ticitl Chimalli, lived on the outskirts of Texcoco. One night she had a dream that she remembered so vividly it was as if it had happened in reality. In this dream, Anacaona left her house and launched into the sky. She didn't have wings, and she didn't have to move her arms. Anacaona controlled her body with her mind and could fly in any direction. She flew over Lake Texcoco, and the majestic Tenochtitlan appeared ahead. Anacaona flew over the long bridge that connected the shore to the city. The city was in the middle of a lake, like a big island, a big, beautiful city on the water. In flight, Anacaona felt as if she were gliding over the waves of a sea. Rushing downward, she picked up speed, then abruptly soared up toward the stars. The sky was brightening behind the silhouette of the mountains; sunrise was beginning.

Anacaona was flying over the city now. She sailed over the chinampas – huge floating gardens on the water that surrounded the outskirts of the city. Chinampas always amazed Anacaona. They were artificial structures. Piles were driven into the bottom of the lake, connected with wattles, and then earth was filled in. Everything that farmers and gardeners needed was planted on this land. In the case of high water, the plantings were not washed away by the currents. The crops simply floated on the surface along with the land on which they grew. Harvests were always plentiful. One benefit of the chinampas was that the land was fertilized by what was collected right there from the bottom of the lake.

Below Anacaona, gardeners were sailing their boats to the thickets of mango, banana palms, orange, and fruit trees. Some of them were rubbed with the juice of plants to protect them from mosquitoes and midges. Where the long and wide chinampas ended, the market began. Anacaona noticed some merchants pointing at her. However, many did not even pay attention to her, as if the girl's flight over the city was an ordinary event. The merchants had more important things to do. They laid out vegetables and fruits on their counters, both locally grown in the chinampas and brought from the shore.

Turning right, Anacaona found herself above a long straight street. Someone was just leaving home below her, many were on their way to work, and someone, conversely, was returning home from night service. A woman standing on the side of the road was shaking out a rug. It was unwise to do this in her yard because infants who lived in the house spent most of the day in the garden, which occupied part of the backyard, and it should always be clean there!

Reaching the end of the street, Anacaona turned left. Now there were artisan settlements below. Anacaona liked to walk among their homes and workshops with her father or her friends when they were allowed to go to Tenochtitlan for the day. However, this rarely occurred. This beautiful city was very far away, and it took a long boat ride to get to it. Things made by craftsmen were often displayed in front of the houses. They would be exchanged for other goods, and among these items was everything that the townspeople needed. Beyond the artisans' settlement, the market could be seen. Craftsmen from other cities of the large expanse of Aztlan brought their crafts there, and the more the state grew, the more diverse the goods in this market became.

Right behind the market, there was a large, magnificent building that housed the calmecac – the school for children of the city's nobility. This school was attended primarily by boys who would replace their fathers in the civil service, the sons of priests, councilmen, judges, and personal ticiti of tlatoque. There was also a court not far from the school. Flying over the courthouse yard, Anacaona saw how the judges were taught to put on their intricate clothes. To Anacaona, who saw mostly the clothing of ordinary people, the judges' caps and their boots with bows seemed funny, although they were interesting in their own way.

Just a moment after, Anacaona was already flying over the center of Tenochtitlan. There were government buildings and a whole block of temples. In the very center of this block stood Huey Teocalli, a giant pyramid, decorated with reliefs, stretching into the sky with two smaller temples. These were temples of Huitzilopochtli, the teotl of sun and war, and Tlaloc, the teotl of rain and fertility. Leading up to the pyramid, on a platform there was a terrifying exhibition of human skulls. This was the largest tzompantli in the city.

Suddenly, at the top of this pyramid between the temples, Anacaona saw the silhouette of a female figure. Anacaona immediately recognized her mother although she had never seen her. Yes, Chimalli had said she died in childbirth, but Anacaona stubbornly continued to believe that there was some kind of mistake, that her mother was alive, and that one day they would meet. So, this is what their meeting would be like! Anacaona rose so high that she was level with the top of the pyramid and accelerated her flight. Her mother's face was glowing; it glowed so brightly that it seemed as if she would go blind when she looked at it, but Anacaona flew toward this light. She landed at the top of the pyramid and rushed to her mother, but suddenly Anacaona's hands and feet seemed to have turned to stone. She tried to run as hard as she could, but she could barely move. The pyramid literally anchored Anacaona to its blocks of stone.

"Anacaona," said the silhouette of a woman, "You must wake up!" The voice was beautiful, just like her mother's voice in her other dreams. She often cried in her sleep when she thought that she would never be able to hear this voice in reality.

"You must wake up!" the woman's voice repeated, and then the pyramid began to shake. One block after another began to fall from it. The silhouette of her mother crumbled into thousands of small fragments, and these fragments cascaded down like corn kernels. From the top of the pyramid, Anacaona saw the destruction of the city over which she had just flown. Roofs and walls of houses fell, burying people under them, and statues of teteo fell, collapsing into pieces as they tumbled down.

Above the surface of the lake, always serene, a wave suddenly surged, rushing toward the city. Anacaona realized that not a single person on the island could escape from this giant wave. Everyone was doomed!

"Anacaona, you must wake up!" She heard her mother's voice again in her head.

Anacaona shuddered and woke up. At the same moment, fragments of the wall of her home rained down on her. Anacaona jumped up and rushed to the exit of the house, but the roof caved in and blocked the way to her escape. The straw fell on the coals of yesterday's fire and immediately ignited. Anacaona rushed to the window and managed to jump out of the house before the flames engulfed it and left it in ruins.

The street was in the same chaos that Anacaona had just seen from a bird's-eye view in her dream. Voices screamed all around her, women ran around with children in their arms, and some men tried to pull a man screaming in pain out from under the ruins of a house. The earth was moving like the waves of the sea. Even the mountains that were visible on the horizon seemed to be shuddering. Those who kept their wits about them had already begun to flee into the jungle; others followed them. Anacaona fled to the jungle with everyone else. She ran, but she smiled because, for the first time in her life, she had finally seen her mother.

Thus began the most terrible earthquake in the history of her people.