We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power-men. Males make the rules and laws ; women transmit them. The culture a nd the Church insist that women are subservient to males.
If a woman rebels she is a mujer mala. I f a woman doesn't renounce herself i n favor of the male, she is selfish. If a woman remains a virgen until she marries, she is a good woman. For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the s treets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education a nd career a nd becoming self-autonomous persons.
A very few of us. As a working class people our chief activity is to put food i n our mouths , a roof over our heads a nd clothes on our backs.
Educating our children is out of reach for most of us. Women are made to feel total failures if they don't marry and have children. Se te va a pasar el tren.
St, soy hija de la Chingada. I ' ve always been her daughter. No 'tes chingando. Humans fear the supernatural, both the u ndivine the animal impulses such as sexuality , the u nconscious, the unknown, the alien and the divine the superhuman, the god i n us. Culture a nd religion seek t o protect us from these two forces. The female, by virtue of creating entities of flesh a nd blood i n her sto mach she bleeds every month but does not die , by virtue of being in tune with nature's cycles, is feared.
Because, accordi ng to Christianity and most other major religions, woman is carnal, animal, a nd closer to the u ndivine, s he must be protected. Woman is the s tranger, the other. S he is man's recogn ized nightmarish pieces, his S hadow-Beast.
The s ight of her sends him into a frenzy of a nger and fear. La gorra, el rebozo, la mantilla are symbols of my culture's "protection" of women. Culture read males professes to protect women.
Actual ly it keeps women in rigidly defined roles. It keeps the girlchild from other men-don't poach on my preserves, only I can touch my child's body. Our mothers taught us well, "Los hombres n o mas quieren una cosa"; men aren't to be trusted, they are selfish a nd are like children. We were never alone with men, not even those of our own family. Through our mothers, the culture gave us mixed messages: No voy a dejar que ningun pelado desgraciado maltrate a mis hijos. And in the next breath it would say, La mujer tiene que hacer lo que le diga el hombre.
Which was it to be-strong, or submissive, rebellious or conforming? Much of what the culture condemns focuses on kinship relationships. The welfare of the family, the community, a nd the tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. The individual exists first as kin-as sister, as father, as padrino-and last as self. In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially i n women; humility and selflessness, the absence o f selfishness, i s considered a virtue.
I n the past, acting humble with members outside the family ensured that you would make no one envidioso envious ; therefore he or she would not use witchcraft against you. If you get above yourself, you're a n envidiosa. If you don't behave like everyone else, la gente will say that you think you're better than others, que te crees grande.
Respeto carries with it a set of rules so that social categories a nd hierarchies will be kept in order: respect is reserved for la abuela, papa, el patron, those with power in the community. Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above the deviants. The Chicano, mexicano, a nd some I ndian cultures have no tolerance for deviance.
Deviance is whatever is condemned by the community. Most societies try to get rid of their deviants. Most cultures have burned a nd beaten their homosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual common. La gente def pueblo talked about her bei ng una de las otras, "of the Others.
They called her half a nd half, mita ' y mita ', neither o ne nor the other but a strange doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified, a work of nature i nverted. There is somethi ng compelli ng about being both male and female, about having an entry i nto both worlds. What we are suffering from is a n absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and can not evolve i nto something better. But I, l ike other queer people, am two in one body, both male a nd female.
Fear of Going Home: Homophobia For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. Being lesbian a nd raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer for some it is genetically i nherent. It's an interesting path, one that continually slips i n a nd out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts.
I t makes for loqueria, the crazies. It is a path of k nowledge-one of knowing and of learning the history of oppress ion of our raza. It is a way of balanci ng, of mitigating duality.
The two lesbian students and we two lesbian instructors met with them to discuss their fears. One of the students said, "I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency. Fear of going home. And of not bei ng taken in. We' re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being u nacceptable, faulty, damaged. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows.
Which leaves only one fear-that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out of its cage. Some of us take another route. We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the undershadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us.
Intimate Terrorism: Life in the Borderlands The world is not a safe place to live in. We shiver i n separate cells in enclosed cities, shoulders hunched, barely keeping the panic below the surface of the skin, daily drinking shock along with our morning coffee, fearing the torches bei ng set to our buildi ngs, the attacks in the streets.
Shutting down. Woman does not feel safe when her own culture, and white culture, are critical of her; when the males of all races hunt her as prey. A lienated from her mother culture, " alien" in the dominant culture, the woman of color does not feel safe within the inner life of her Self. Petrified, she can't respond, her face caught between las intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits. B locked, immobilized, we can' t move forward, can' t move backwards.
That writhing serpent movement, the very movement of life, swifter than lightning, frozen. We do not engage fully. We do not make full use of our facul ties.
We abnegate. My Chicana ide ntity is grounded in the I ndian woman's history of resistance. Like la Llorona, the I ndian woman's o nly means of protest was wailing. So mama, Raza, how wonderful, no tener que rendir cuentas a nadie. I feel perfectly free to rebel a nd to rail against my culture. I fea r no betrayal on my part because, unlike Chicanas and other women of color who grew up whi te or who have only recently returned to their native cultural roots, I was totally i mmersed i n m i ne.
I t wasn' t until I went t o h igh school that I " saw" whites. U ntil I worked o n my master's degree I had not gotten withi n an arm's distance of them.
I was totally i m mersed en lo mexicano, a rural, peasant, isolated, mexicanismo. Yet in leaving home I did not lose touch with my origins because lo mexicano i s i n my system. I a m a turtle, wherever I go I carry " home" on my back. Not me sold out my people but they me. So yes, though " home" permeates every sinew and cartilage in my body, I too a m afraid o f going home. Though I ' l l defend m y race a nd culture w he n they a re a ttacked by non-mexicanos, conosco el malestar de mi cultura.
I abhor some of my culture's ways, how i t cripples its women, com o burras, our s trengths used against us, lowly burras bearing humility with dignity. The abili ty to serve, claim the males, is our highest virtue. I abhor how my culture makes macho caricatures of its men. I can understand why the more tinged with A nglo blood, the more adamantly my colored and colorless sisters glorify their colored culture's values-to offset the extreme devaluation of it by the white culture.
It's a legitimate reaction. But I will not glorify those aspects of my culture which have injured me and which have inj u red me in the name of protecting me. So, don' t give me your tenets a nd your laws. Don' t give me your lukewarm gods. What I want is an accounting with all three cultures-white, Mexican, I ndian. I want the freedom to carve a nd chisel my own face, to stal,lnch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails.
And if going home is denied me then I will have to stand a nd claim my space, making a new culture-una cultura mestiza-with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture.
Nos condenamos a nosotros mismos. Esta raza vencida, enemigo cuerpo. Malinali Tenepat, or Malintzin, has become known as la Chingada-the fucked one. She has become the bad word that passes a dozen times a day from the lips of Chicanos. Whore, prostitute, the woman who sold out her people to the Spaniards are epithets Chicanos spit out with contempt.
The worst kind of betrayal lies in making us believe that the I ndian woman in us is the betrayer. We, indias y mestizas, police the I ndian in us, brutalize and condemn her.
Male culture has done a good job on us. Son los costumbres que traicionan. La india en mi es la sombra: La Chingada, Tlazolteotl, Coatlicue. Son ellas que oyemos lamentando a sus hijas perdidas. Because of the color of my skin they betrayed me. For 3 00 years s he was invisible, she was not heard. Many times she wished to speak, to act, to protest, to challe nge. The odds were heavily against her. She remained faceless a nd voiceless, but a light shone through her veil of silence.
A nd though she was unable to spread her l imbs a nd though for her right now the sun has sunk u nder the earth a nd there is no moon, she continues to tend the flame. The spirit of the fire spurs her to fight for her own skin a nd a piece of ground to sta nd on, a ground from which to view the world-a perspective, a homeground where she can plumb the rich a ncestral roots into her own ample mestiza heart. She waits till the waters are not so turbulent a nd the mountains not so slippery with s leet.
Battered a nd bruised she waits, her bruises throwing her back upon herself a nd the rhythmic pulse of the feminine. Coatlalopeuh waits with her. A qui en la soledad prospera su rebeldia. En la soledad Ella prospera. Largas, transparentes, en sus barrigas llevan Lo que puedan arebatarle al amor. Oh, oh, oh, la mat6 y aparese una mayor. Oh, con mucho mas infierno en digestion. I dream of serpents, serpents of the sea, A certain sea, oh, of serpents I dream.
Long, transparent, i n their bel l ies they carry All that they can snatch away from love. Oh, oh, oh, I kill one and a larger one appears. Oh, with more hellfire burning i nside! No vayas al escusado en lo oscuro. Don't go to the outhouse at night, P rieta, my mother would say. No se te vaya a meter algo por alla. A s nake will crawl into your nalgas,2 make you pregnant. They seek warmth in the cold. Dicen que las culebras like to suck chiches, 3 can draw milk out of you.
En el escusado in the half-light spiders hang like gliders. Under my bare buttocks and the rough planks the deep yawning tugs at me. I can see my legs fly up to my face as my body falls through the round hole i nto the sheen of swarming maggots below. Avoiding the s nakes under the porch I walk back into the kitchen, step on a big black one slithering across the floor.
All around us the woods. Quelite 5 towered above me, choking the stubby cotton that had outlived the deer's teeth. I swung el azad6n 6 hard. When I heard the rattle the world froze. I barely felt its fangs. Boot got all the veneno. I stood still, the sun beat down. Afterwards I smelled where fear had been : back of neck, under arms, between my legs; I fel t its heat slide down my body. I swallowed the rock it had hardened i nto.
When Mama had gone down the row a nd was out of sight, I took out my pocketknife. I made an X over each prick. My body followed the blood, fell onto the soft ground. I put my mouth over the red and sucked and spit between the rows of cotton. I picked up the pieces, placed them end on end. Culebra de cascabel. It would shed no more. I buried the pieces between the rows of cotton.
I n the morning I saw through s nake eyes, felt s nake blood course through my body. The serpent, mi tono , my animal counterpart. I was immune to its venom. Forever immune. Snakes, viboras : since that day I've sought and shunned them. Always when they cross my path, fear and elation flood my body.
I know things older than Freud, older than gender. Like the a ncient Olmecs, I know Earth is a coiled Serpent. Forty years it's taken me to enter into the Serpent, to acknowledge that I have a body, that I am a body and to assimilate the animal body, the animal soul.
Siempre tenia las velas prendidas. A lli hacia pro mesas a la Virgen de Guadalupe. My family, like most Chicanos, did not practice Romah Catholicism but a folk Catholicism with many pagan elements. La Virgen de Guadalupe's I ndian name is Coatlalopeuh. She is the central deity connecting us to our I ndian ancestry.
Coatlalopeuh is descended from, or is an aspect of, earlier Mesoamerican fertility and Earth goddesses. As creator goddess, she was mother of the celestial deities, and of Huitzilopochtli a nd his sister, Coyolxauhqui, She With Golden Bells, Goddess of the Moon, who was decapitated by her brother. Another aspect of Coatlicue is Tonantsi. They divided her who had been complete, who possessed both upper ligh t and u nderworld dark aspects. The Nahuas, through ritual a nd prayer, sought to oblige Tonantsi to ensure their hea l th a nd the growth of their crops.
It was she who gave Mexico the cactus plant to provide her people with milk a nd pulque. I t was she who defended her childre n against the wrath of the Christian God by challenging God, her son, to produce mother's milk as she had done to prove that his benevolence equalled his disciplinary harshness.
They went even further; they made all Indian deities and religious practices the work of the devil. Thus Tonantsi became Guadalupe , the chaste protective mother, the defender of the Mexican people.
El nueve de diciembre de! A lz6 al cabeza via que en la cima de! Parada en frente de! Nuestra Senora Maria de Coatlalopeuh se le apareci6. Dile a tu gente que yo soy la madre de Dias, a las indios yo! Juan Diego volvi6, llefio su tilma 1 2 con rosas de castilla creciendo milagrosamiente en la nieve. Se las llev6 al obispo, y cuando abrio su tilma el retrato de la Virgen ahi estaba pintado. Guadalupe appeared on December 9, 1 5 3 1 , on the spot where the Aztec goddess, Tonantsi " Our Lady Mother" , had been worshipped by the Nahuas a nd where a temple to her had stood.
Lopeuh means " the one who has dominion over serpents. Soon after, Mexico ceased to belong to Spain, and la Virgen de Guadalupe began to eclipse all the other male and female religious figures in Mexico, Central America a nd parts of the U. The role of defender or patro n has traditionally been assigned to male gods. During the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata and Miguel H idalgo used her i mage to move el pueblo mexicano toward freedom.
Pachucos zoot suiters tattoo her i mage on their bodies. In Texas she is considered the patron saint of Chicanos. Cuando Carita, mi h ermanit o , was missing in action and, later, wou nded in Viet Nam, mi mama got on her kneesy le prometio a Ella que si su h ijito volvia vivo she would crawl on her knees and light novenas in her honor. She, like my race, is a synthesis of the old world and the new, of the religion and culture of the two races in our psyche, the conquerors and the conquered.
She is the symbol of the mestizo true to his or her I ndian values. IA cultura chicana identifies with the mother I ndian rather than with the father Spanish. Our faith is rooted in i ndigenous attributes, images, symbols, magic and myth. As a symbol of hope a nd faith, she sustains a nd insures our survival. To Mexicans on both sides of the border, Guadalupe is the symbol of our rebellion against the rich, upper and middleclas s ; against their subjugation of the poor and the indio.
She mediates between humans and the divine, between this reality and the reality of spirit entities. IA Virgen de Guadalupe is the symbol of ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity that Chicanos-mexicanos , people of mixed race, people who have I ndian blood, people who cross cultures, by necessity possess.
IA gente Chicana tiene tres madres. Yet we have not all embraced this dichotomy. In the U. Southwest, Mexico, Central and South A merica the indio and the mestizo continue to worship the old spirit entities i ncluding Guadalupe a nd their supernatural power, under the guise of Christian saints. Ustedes que persis ten mudas en sus cuevas. Ustedes Senoras que ah ora, coma yo, estan en desgracia.
Before the change to male dominance, Coatlicue , Lady of the Serpent Skirt, contained and bala nced the duali ties of male and female, light and dark, life and death. The cha nges that led to the loss of the balanced oppositions began when the Azteca, one of the twenty Toltec tribes, made the last pilgrimage from a place called Aztlan.
The migration south began about the year A. Three hundred years later the adva nce guard arrived near Tula, the capital of the declining Toltec empire. By the 1 1 th century, they had joined with the Chichimec tribe of Mexitin afterwards called Mexica into one religious and administrative organization within Aztlan, the Aztec territory. The Mexitin, with their tribal god Tetzauhteotl Huitzilopochtli Magnificent Humming Bird on the Left , gai ned control of the religious system.
Huitzilopochtli assigned the Azteca-Mexica the task of keeping the human race the present cosmic age called the Fifth Sun, El Quinto Sol alive. The Aztec people considered themselves in charge of regulating all earthly matters. After 1 00 years in the central plateau, the Azteca-Mexica went to Chapultepec, where they settled in 1 the present site of the park on the outskirts of Mexico City.
There, in 1 34 5 , the Aztec-Mexica chose the site of their capital, Tenochtitlan. From 1 , the Aztecs emerged as a militaristic state that preyed on neighboring tribes for tribute and captives. For if one "fed" the gods, the human race would be saved from total extinction. Women possessed property, and were curers as well as priestesses. Accordi ng to the codices, women in former times had the supreme power in Tula, and in the beginning of the Aztec dynasty, the royal blood ran through the female line.
A council of elders of the Calpul headed by a supreme leader, or tlactlo , called the father and mother of the people, governed the tribe. The supreme leader's vice-emperor occupied the position of "Snake Woman" or Cihuacoatl, a goddess. The final break with the democratic Calpul came when the four Aztec lords of royal lineage picked the king' s successor from h i s siblings or male descendants. These collective wailing rites may have been a sign of resistance i n a society which glorified the warrior a nd war a nd for whom the women of the conquered tribes were booty.
The nobility kept the tribute, the commoner got nothing, resulting in a class split. The conquered tribes hated the Aztecs because of the rape of their women and the heavy taxes levied on them. The Tlaxcalans were the Aztec's bitter enemies and it was they who helped the Spanish defeat the Aztec rule rs, who were by this time so unpopular with their own common people that they could not even mobilize the populace to defend the city.
In pre-Columbian America the most notable symbol was the serpent. The Olmecs associated womanhood with the Serpent's mouth which was guarded by rows of dangerous teeth, a sort of vagina dentate.
They conside red it the most sacred place on earth, a place of refuge, the creative womb from which all things were born and to which all things returned.
Snake people had holes, entrances to the body of the Earth Serpent; they followed the Serpent's way, identified with the Serpent deity, with the mouth, both the eater and the eaten. The destiny of humankind is to be devoured by the Serpent. I passed between the two fangs, the flickering tongue.
Having come through the mouth of the serpent, swallowed, I found myself suddenly in the dark, sliding down a smooth wet surface down down into an even darker darkness. Having crossed the portal, the raised hi nged mouth, havi ng entered the serpent's belly, now there was no looki ng back, no going back. Why do I cast no shadow? Are there lights from all sides shining on me? Ahead, ahead. I knew at that instant: something must change or I'd die.
Alga tenia que cambiar. After each of my four bouts with death I'd catch glimpses of an otherworld Serpe nt. Once, in my bedroom, I saw a cobra the s i ze of the room, her hood expanding over me. When I bli nked she was gone. The Presences She appeared in white, garbed in white, standing white, pure white.
Rio Grande i n South Texas-that triangular piece o f land wedged between the rivery el golfo which serves as the Texas-U. Down the road, a little ways from our house, was a deserted church. Los mexicanos called her la ]ila. Some thought she was la Llorona.
She was, I think, Cihuacoatl, Serpen t Woman, a ncient Aztec goddess of the earth , of war and birth, patron of midwives, a nd antecedent of la Llorona. Covered with chalk, Cihuacoatl wears a white dress with a decoration half red a nd half black. Her hair forms two l i ttle horns which the Aztecs depicted as knives crossed on her forehead. The lower part of her face is a bare j a wbone, signifying death.
On her back she carries a cradle, the knife of sacrifice swaddled as if it were her papoose, her child. Long before it takes place, she is the fi rst to predict something is to happen. Now, I wonder if this story and similar ones were the culture's attempts to "protect" members of the family, especially girls, from "wandering. There's an ancient Indian tradition of burning the umbilical cord of an infant girl under the house so she will never stray from it and her domestic role.
A mis ancas caen las cueros de culebra, cuatro veces par afio las arrastro, me tropiezo y me caigo y cada vez que miro una culebra le pregunto cQue traes conmigo?
Four years ago a red snake crossed my path as I walked through the woods. The direction of its movement, its pace, its colors, the " mood" of the trees a nd the wind and the snake-they all "spoke" to me, told me things.
I look for omens everywhere, everywhere catch glimpses of the patterns a nd cycles of my life. I remember listening to the voices of the wind as a child and understandi ng its messages. Los espiritus that ride the back of the south wind. I remember their exhalation blowing in through the slits in the door during those hot Texas afternoons. A gust of wind raising the linoleum under my feet, buffeting the house.
Everything trembling. We' re not supposed to remember such otherworldly events. We' re supposed to ignore, forget, kill those fleeting images of the soul's presence a nd of the spirit's presence. We' re supposed to forget that every cell in our bodies, every bone a nd bird a nd worm has spirit m it. Like many I ndians a nd Mexicans, I did not deem my psychic experiences real.
I denied their occurrences and let my inner senses a trophy. I allowed white rationality to tell me that the existence of the "other world" was mere pagan superstition. The other mode of consciousness facilitates images from the soul a nd the unconscious through dreams and the imagi nation. I ts work is labeled "fiction," make-believe, wish-fulfillment.
White anthropologists claim that Indians have "primitive" and therefore deficient minds, that we cannot think in the higher mode of consciousness-rationality. This dichotomy is the root of all violence. Not only was the brain split into two functions but so was reality. Thus people who inhabit both realities are forced to live i n the interface between the two, forced to become adept at switching modes. Such is the case with the india a nd the mestiza.
I nstitutionalized religion fears trafficking with the spirit world and stigmatizes it as witchcraft. I t has strict taboos against this kind of i nner knowledge. I t fears what Jung calls the Shadow, the unsavory aspects of ourselves.
But even more it fears the supra-human, the god in ourselves. I n my own l ife, the Catholic Church fails to give meaning to my daily acts, to my continuing encounters with the "other world.
The Catholic and Protestant religions encourage fear and distrust of life a nd of the body; they encourage a split between the body a nd the spirit and totally ignore the sou l ; they e ncourage us to kill off parts of ourselves. We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal; i ntelligence dwells only in the head. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to " real" events.
I was not supposed to believe in susto , a sudden shock or fall that frightens the soul out of the body. And growing up between such opposing spiritualities how could I reconcile the two, the pagan and the Christian? N o matter t o what use m y people put the supranatural world, it is evident to me now that the spirit world, whose existence the whites are so adamant in denyi ng, does in fact exist.
This very mi nute I sense the presence of the spirits of my ancestors in my room. And I think la ]ila is Cihuacoatl, Snake Woman ; she is la Llorona , Daughter of Night, traveling the dark terrains of the unknown searchi ng for the lost parts of herself.
I remember la ]ila following me once, remember her eerie lament. It is an instant "sensing," a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning.
Those who are pushed out of the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized when not brutalized into insensitivity. Those who are pounced on the most have it the stronges t-the females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign.
We'l l sense the rapist when he's five blocks down the street. Pain makes us acutely a nxious to avoid more of it, so we hone that radar. It's a kind of survival tactic that people, caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate. It is latent in all of us. I walk i n to a house and I know whether it is empty or occupied. I feel the lingeri ng cha rge i n the air of a recent fight or lovemaking or depression. I sense the emotions someone near is emitting-whether friendly or threatening.
Hate a nd fear-the more intense the emotion, the greater my reception of it. I feel a tingling on my skin when someone is staring at me or thi nki ng about me. I can tell how others feel by the way they s mell, where others a re by the air pressure on my skin. I can spot the love or greed or generosi ty lodged i n the tissues of another. Often I sense the direction of a nd my distance from people or objects-in the dark, or with my eyes closed, without looking.
It must be a vestige of a proximity sense, a sixth sense that's lain dormant from long-ago times. Fear develops the proximity sense aspect of la facultad. But there is a deeper sensing that is a nother aspect of this faculty.
It is a nything that breaks i n to one's everyday mode of perception, that causes a break i n one's defenses a nd resistance, anything that takes one from one's habitual groundi ng, causes the depths to open up, causes a shift i n perception. This shift i n perception deepens the way we see concrete objects a nd people; the senses become so acute a nd piercing that we can see through things, view events i n depth, a piercing that reaches the u nderworld the real m of the soul. As we plunge vertically, the break, with its accompanying new seeing, makes us pay attention to the soul, a nd we a re thus carried into awareness-an experiencing of soul Self.
We lose something i n this mode of i nitiation, something is taken from us : our i nnocence, our unknowing ways, our safe a nd easy ignorance. There is a prejudice and a fear of the dark, chthonic underworld , material such as depression, illness, death a nd the v iolations that can bring on this break. Consciously, she had no idea why. Perhaps a part of her knew that a mirror is a door through which the soul may "pass" to the other s ide and she didn't want us to "accidentally" follow our father to the place where the souls of the dead live.
The mirror is an a mbivalent symbol. In ancient times the Mexican Indians made mirrors of volcanic glass known as obsidian. Seers would gaze into a mirror until they fell into a trance. Within the black, glossy surface, they saw clouds of s moke which would part to reveal a vision concerning the future of the tribe and the will of the gods.
Seeing a nd bei ng seen. Subject and object, I and she. The eye p i ns down the object of its gaze, scrutinizes it, j udges it. A glance can freeze us i n place ; it can "possess" us. I t can erect a barrier against the world. But i n a glance also lies awareness, knowledge. These seemingly contradictory aspects-the act of bei ng seen, held immobil i zed by a glance, and "seeing through" an experience-are symbolized by the underground aspects of Coatlicue, Cihuacoatl, and Tlazolteotl which cluster i n what I call the Coatlicue state.
El secreto terrible y la rajadura Shame is a wound felt from the inside, dividing us both from ourselves and from one another. By the worried look on my parents' faces I learned early that something was fundamentally wrong with me. When I was older I would look into the mirror, afraid of mi secreto terrible, the secret sin I tried to conceal-la seiia, the mark of the Beast. I was afraid it was in plain sight for all to see. I fel t alien, I knew I was alien. I was the mutant s toned out of the herd, something deformed with evil inside.
She has this fea r that s he h a s n o names that she has many names that she doesn't know her names She has this fear that she's an image that comes and goes clearing and darkening the fear that she's the dreamwork inside someone else's skull She has this fear that if she takes off her clothes shoves her brain aside peels off her skin that if she drains the blood vessels strips the flesh from the bone flushes out the marrow She has this fear that when she does reach herself turns around to embrace herself a lion's or witch' s or serpent's head will turn around s wallow her and grin She has this fea r that if she digs into herself she won't find a nyone that when she gets "there" s he won't find her notches on the trees the birds will have eaten all the crumbs She has this fear that she won't find the way back She felt shame for being abnormal.
The bleedi ng distanced her from others. Her body h ad betrayed her. She could not trust her instincts, her " horses," because they stood for her core self, her dark Indian self. Her soft belly exposed to the sharp eyes of everyone; they see, they see. Their eyes penetrate her; they slit her from head to bel ly.
She is at their mercy, s he can do nothing to defend herself. And she is ashamed that they see her so exposed, so vulnerable. She has to learn to push their eyes away. She has to still her eyes from looking at their feel i ngs-feelings that can catch her in their gaze, bind her to them.
Ya veras, tan bajo que me he caido. Ay mama, tan bajo que me he caido. Esa Gloria, la que niega, la que teme correr desenfrenada, la que tiene miedo renegar al papel de victima. Esa, la que voltea su cara a la pared descascarada. Mira, tan bajo que se ha caido. Ya vez, tan bajo que me he caido. Se enmudecen mis ojos al saber que la vida no se entrega. Mi pecado no es la rebeldia ni el anajamiento. Es que no ame mucho, que anduve indecisa y a la prisa, que tuve poca fey no Jui dispuesta de querer ser lo que soy.
Traicione a mi camino. A qui nomas encerrada en mi cuarto, sangrandome la cara con las ufias. Esa Gloria que rechaza entregarse a su destino. Quiero contenerme, no puedo y desbordo.
Vas ha ver lo alto que voy a subir, aqui vengo. No telephone, no television, no radio. Alone with the presence in the room. Me, my psyche, the Shadow-Beas t? During the dark side of the moon something in the mirror catches my gaze, I seem a l l eyes a nd nose. I ns ide my skull something shifts.
I "see" my face. Gloria, the everyday face; Prieta and Prietita, my childhood face s ; Gaudi, the face my mother and sister and brothers know. And there in the black, obsidian mirror of the Nahuas is yet another face, a s tranger's face. Simultaneamente me miraba la cara desde distintos angulos. Y mi cara, como la realidad, tenia un caracter multiplice. Between the two eyes in her head, the tongueless magical eye a nd the loquacious rational eye, was la rajadura, the abyss that no bridge could span.
Separated, they could not visit each other and each was too far away to hear what the other was saying. Silence rose like a river a nd could not be held back, it flooded a nd drowned everything.
I have no protection. So I cultivate needles, nettles, razor-sharp spikes to protect myself from others. There are many defense strategies that the self uses to escape the agony of inadequacy a nd I have used all of them. I have split from a nd disowned those parts of myself that others rej ected. I have used rage to drive others away and to insulate myself against exposure.
I have reciprocated with contempt for those who have roused shame in me. I have i nternalized rage and con tempt, one part of the self the accusatory, persecutory, j udgmental using defense strategies against a nother part of the self the object of contemp t. As a person, I, as a people, we, Chicanos, blame ourselves, hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves. Most of this goes on u nconsciously; we only know that we are hurting, we suspect that there is something "wrong" with us, somethi ng fundamentally "wrong.
One's attention cannot be captured by someth i ng else, one does not "see" a nd awareness does not happen. One remains ignorant of the fact that one is afraid, and that it i s fear that holds one petrified, frozen i n stone.
If we can't see the face of fear in the mirror, then fea r must not be there. The feel ing is censored a nd erased before it registers in our consc10usness. If it sticks around after having outlived its usefulness, we become "stuck" in it and it takes possession of us.
But we need to be arrested. Some past experience or condition has created this need. This stopping is a survival mechanism, but one which must vanish when it's no longer needed if growth is to occur. We need Coatlicue to slow us up so that the psyche can assimilate previous experiences a nd process the changes. If we don't take the time, she'll lay us low with an illness, forci ng us to " rest.
Let the wound caused by the serpent be cured by the serpent. The soul uses everything to further its own maki ng. Our greatest disappointments and painful experiences-if we can make meaning out of them-can lead us toward becoming more of who we a re.
Or they can remain meaningless. The Coatlicue state can be a way station or it can be a way of life. The Coatlicue State Coatlicue da luz a todo y a todo devora. Ella es el monstruo que se trag6 todos los seres vivientes y los astros, es el monstruo que se traga al sol cada tarde y le da luz cade maiiana. Coatlicue is a rupture in our everyday world. As the Earth, she opens a nd swallows us, plunging us into the underworld where the soul resides, allowing us to dwell in darkness.
Coatlicue5 is one of the powerful images, or "archetypes," 6 that inhabits, or passes through, my psyche. She has no head. I n its place two spurts of blood gush up, transfiguring into enormous twin rattlesnakes facing each other, which symbolize the earth-bound character of human life.
She has no hands. Hanging from her neck is a necklace of open hands alternating with human hearts. The hands symboli ze the act of giving l ife ; the hearts, the pain of Mother Earth giving birth to all her children, as well as the pain that humans suffer throughout life i n their hard struggle for existence.
The hearts also represen t the taking of life through sacrifice to the gods i n excha nge for their preservation of the world. In the center of the collar hangs a human skull with living eyes in its sockets.
Another identical skull is attached to her belt. These symbolize life and death together as parts of one process. Coatlicue depicts the contradictory. I n her figure, all the symbols i mportant to the religion a nd philosophy of the Aztecs are i n tegra ted.
Like Medusa, the Gorgon, she is a symbol of the fus ion of opposites : the eagle a nd the serpent, heaven a nd the u nderworld, life a nd death, mobility and immobility, beauty and horror. We are not living up to our potentialities a nd thereby i mpedi ng the evolution of the soul-or worse, Coatlicue, the Earth, opens a nd plunges us i nto its maw, devours us.
By keeping the conscious mind occupied or i mmobile, the germination work takes p lace in the deep, dark earth of the unconscious. Frozen i n stasis, s he perceives a slight movement-a thousand slithering serpent hairs, Coatlicue. It is activity not i mmobility at its most dynamic stage, but it i s a n underground movement requiring all her energy.
I t brooks no i nterference from the conscious mind. I don't want to know, I don't want to be seen. My resistance, my refusal to know some truth about myself bri ngs on that paralysis, depression-brings on the Coatlicue state. At fi rst I feel exposed and opened to the depth of my dissatisfaction. Then I feel myself closing, hidi ng, holding myself together rather than allowing myself to fall apart. Sweating, with a headache, unwilling to communicate, frightened by sudden noises, estoy asustada.
In the Mexican culture it is called susto, the soul frightened out of the body. The afflicted one is allowed to rest and recuperate, to withdraw into the "underworld" without drawing condemnation. I descend into miktlan, the underworld. In the "place of the dead" I wallow, sinking deeper and deeper. But I dig in my heels and resist. I don't want to see what's beh i nd Coatlicue's eyes, her hollow sockets. I ca n't confront her face to face ; I must take small sips of her face through the corners of my eyes, chip away at the ice a sliver at a time.
Behind the ice mask I see my own eyes. They will not look at me. Miro que estoy encabronada, miro la resistencia -resistance to knowing, to letting go, to that deep ocean where once I dived into death. I am afraid of drowning.
Resistance to sex, intima te touching, opening myself to the alien other where I am out of control, not on patrol. Every increment of conscious ness, every step forward is a travesia, a crossing. I am again an alien in new territory. And again, and again. But if I escape conscious awareness, escape "knowing," I won't be rpovi ng. Knowledge makes me more aware, it makes me more conscious. I am no longer the same person I was before.
Now she beats herself over the head for her "inactivity," a stage that is as necessary as breathing. But that means bei ng Mexican. All her life she's been told that Mexicans are lazy. She has had to work twice as hard as others to meet the standards of the dominant culture which have, in part, become her standards.
Why does she have to go and try to make "sense" of it all? Every t i me she makes "sense" of someth ing, she has to "cross over," kicking a hole out of the old boundaries of the self and slipping u nder or over, dragging the old skin along, stumbling over i t.
I t hampers her movemen t i n the new territory, dragging the ghost of the past with her. It is a dry birth, a breech birth, a screaming birth, one that fights her every inch of the way. I t is only when s he is on the other side and the shell cracks open and the lid from her eyes lifts that she sees things in a different perspective.
It is only then that s he makes the connections, formulates the insights. It is only then that her consciousness expands a tiny notch, another rattle appears on the rattlesnake tail and the added growth slightly alters the sounds she makes.
Suddenly the repressed energy rises, makes decisions, connects with conscious energy and a new life begins. It is her reluctance to cross over, to make a hole in the fence and walk across, to cross the river, to take that flying leap into the dark, that drives her to escape, that forces her i nto the fecund cave of her imagination where s he is cradled i n the arms of Coatlicue, who will never let her go. If s he doesn't change her ways , she will remain a stone forever.
No hay mas que cambiar. The one who watches, Darkness, my night. Though darkness was "present" before the world a nd all things were created, it is equated with matter, the maternal, the germinal, the potential. I n a ttending to this first dark ness I am led back to the mystery of the Origin. The one who watches, the one who whispers in a slither of serpents. Something is trying to tell me. But I know what I want and I stamp ahead, arrogance edging my face.
I tremble before the animal, the alien, the sub- or suprahuman, the me that has something in common with the wind and the trees and the rocks, that possesses a demon determination and ruthlessness beyond the human. Los dos arbitran por el cuadro de vidrio de la ventana. I can sense the premonition of cold in the way the wind stirs the leaves in the trees, in the gray slate square of sky that frames my window. Winter's coming. I sit between warmth a nd cold never knowing which is my territory, domesticated as I am by human warmth and the peck peck of my keyboard.
Having lived my whole life i n an ignorant shadow, under the sight of hunger shuffling its little child feet, whimpering, lost. Pain is the way of life.
Now I sense a warm breath on my face, see the shadow of a giant bird, her huge wings folding over me. I spent the first half of my life learning to rule myself, to grow a will, and now at midlife I fi nd that autonomy is a boulder on my path that I keep crashing i nto. I can't seem to stay out of my own way. I've always been aware that there is a greater power than the conscious I. When to bow down to Her a nd when to allow the limited conscious mind to take over-that is the problem.
For a few minutes, A ntigua, mi Diosa, I'm going to give up my control to you. I'm going to pull it out. I plunge my hands into my solar plexus, pull. Out comes the handle with a dial face, dripping blood, unblinking eyes, watching. Eagle eyes, my mother calls me. Looking, always looking, only I don't have enough eyes. My sight is limited. You hold it for a while. Promise to give it back.
Please, A ntigua. The alarm will go off if you' re i n danger. I imagine its shrill peel when danger walks a round the corner, the insulati ng walls coming down around me. Suddenly, I feel like I have a nother set of teeth in my mouth. A tremor goes through my body from my buttocks to the roof of my mouth. On my palate I feel a tingling ticklish sensation, then something seems to be falling on me, over me, a curtai n of rai n or light.
Shock pulls my breath out of me. The sphincter muscle tugs itself up, up, and the heart in my cunt starts to beat. A light is all a round me-so i n tense it could be white or black or at that j u ncture where extremes turn i nto their opposites. It passes through my body and comes out of the other side.
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