Genesis Read online

  “Careful. They go to bed with hatred,” warns Domingo Martinez, father of countless mestizos and future monks. He says the Indian women are rancorous and stubborn, always eager to return to the woods where they were captured, and that one can’t trust them with even an ounce of cotton because they hide it or burn it or give it away, that their glory is just to ruin the Christians and destroy whatever there is. Some have hanged themselves or eaten dirt and there are some who deny the breast to their newly born children. The Indian Juliana killed conquistador Nuño de Cabrera one night and shouted to the others to follow her example.

  (73 and 74)

  Womanizer Song, from the Spanish Songbook

  If the Moors can use

  seven women,

  Why should Spaniards refuse

  to use as many?

  Oh, what joy

  that Spain is back

  on the Moorish track.

  To love one is nothing,

  To love two is hypocrisy,

  To love three and deceive four,

  That’s the glory that comes from God!

  (196)

  1556: La Imperial

  Mariño de Lobera

  The horse, golden of hide and full of dash, decides direction and pace. If he wants to gallop, he gallops; he seeks open country and romps amid tall grasses, approaches the stream, and backs away; respectfully, without haste, he comes and goes along the dirt streets of the brand-new city.

  Riding bareback with a free rein, Pedro Mariño de Lobera parades and celebrates. All the wine there was in La Imperial flows through his veins. From time to time he giggles and makes some remark. The horse turns his head, looks, and approves.

  It is four years today since Pedro quit the entourage of the viceroy in Lima and took the long road to Chile.

  “I’m four years old,” says Don Pedro to the horse. “Four little years. You’re older and stupider.”

  During those years he has seen plenty and fought plenty. He says that these Chilean lands sprout joys and gold the way plants grow elsewhere. And when there is war, as there always is, the Virgin throws out a thick fog to blind the Indians, and the apostle Santiago contributes his lance and white horse to the conquering host. Not far from here nor long ago, when the Araucanian squadrons had their backs to the sea, a giant wave knocked them down and swallowed them up.

  Don Pedro remembers and comments, and the horse nods.

  Suddenly lightning snakes across the sky and thunder shakes the ground.

  “It’s raining,” Don Pedro observes. “It’s raining milk!”

  The horse raises his head and drinks.

  (130)

  1558: Cañete

  The War Goes On

  With a hundred arrows in his breast, Caupolicán meets his end. The great one-eyed chief falls, defeated by treachery. The moon used to stop to contemplate his feats, and there was not a man who didn’t love him or fear him, but a traitor could do him in.

  A year ago treachery also caught Lautaro by surprise.

  “And you, what are you doing here?” asked the Spanish leader.

  “I come to offer you Lautaro’s head,” said the traitor.

  Lautaro did not enter Santiago as a conqueror at the head of his men. His head was brought in from Mount Chilipirco on the longest lance in the Spanish army.

  Treachery is a weapon as devastating as typhus, smallpox, and hunger, all of which plague the Araucanians while the war destroys crops and plantings. Yet the farmers and hunters of these Chilean lands have other weapons. Now they know how to use horses, which previously struck terror into them: they attack on horseback, a whirlwind of mounted men, and protect themselves with rawhide armor. They know how to fire the arquebuses they take on the battlefield, and they tie swords to the tips of their lances. Behind moving tree branches, in the morning mist, they advance unseen. Then they feign retreat, so that the enemy horses will sink into swamps or break their legs in concealed traps. Smoke columns tell them which way the Spanish troops are heading: they bite them and disappear. They return suddenly and hurl themselves on the enemy when the sun burns brightest and the soldiers are frying in their armor plate. Horsemen are brought down with the slipknot lassos invented by Lautaro.

  What is more, the Araucanians fly. Before going into battle they rub themselves with feathers of the swiftest birds.

  (5 and 66)

  Araucanian Song of the Phantom Horseman

  Who is this

  riding on the wind,

  like the tiger,

  with his phantom body?

  When the oaks see him,

  when people see him,

  they say in a whisper

  one to the other:

  “Look, brother, here comes

  the ghost of Caupolicán.”

  (42)

  1558: Michmaloyan

  The Tzitzimes

  They have caught and are punishing Juan Tetón, Indian preacher of the village of Michmaloyan in the Valley of Mexico, and also those who listened and paid heed to him. Juan was going about announcing the last days of an era and the proximity of a year to end all years. At that point, he said, total darkness would fall, the verdure would dry up, and there would be hunger. All who failed to wash baptism out of their hair would turn into animals. Tzitzimes, terrifying black birds, would descend from the sky and eat everyone who had not washed off the mark of the priests.

  The tzitzimes had also been announced by Martín Océlotl, who was captured and beaten, dispossessed and banished from Texcoco. He, too, said that there would be no flame at the festival of new fire and the world would end because of those who had forgotten the teachings of the fathers and grandfathers and no longer knew to whom they owed birth and growth. The tzitzimes will fall upon us through the darkness, he said, and devour women and men. According to Martín Océlotl, the missionary friars are tzitzimes in disguise, enemies of all happiness, who don’t know that we are born to die and that after death we will have neither pleasure nor joy.

  And the old lords who survive in Tlaxcala also have something to say about the priests: Poor things, they say. Poor things. They must be sick or crazy. At noon, at midnight, and at the dawn hour, when everyone rejoices, they shout and cry. They must have something terribly wrong with them. They are men without any sense. They seek neither pleasure nor happiness, but sadness and loneliness.

  (109)

  1558: Yuste

  Who Am I? What Have I Been?

  Breathing is a violent effort, and his head is on fire. His feet, swollen with gout, will no longer walk. Stretched out on the terrace, he who was monarch of half the world is in flight from his jesters and contemplates the dusk in this Estremaduran valley. The sun is departing beyond the purple mountains, and its last rays redden the shadows over the Jeronomite convent.

  He has entered many a city as a conqueror. He has been acclaimed and hated. Many have given their lives for him; the lives of many more have been taken in his name. After forty years of traveling and fighting, the highest prisoner of his own empire wants to rest and be forgotten. Who am I, what have I been? In the mirror he has seen death entering. The deceiver or the deceived?

  Between battles, by the light of campfires, he has signed more than four hundred loan agreements with German, Genoese, and Flemish bankers, and the galleons have never brought enough silver and gold from America. He who so loved music has heard more of the thundering of guns and horses than sacred lute melodies; and at the end of so much war his son, Philip, will inherit a bankrupt empire.

  Through the fog, from the north, Charles had arrived in Spain when he was seventeen, followed by his entourage of Flemish merchants and German bankers, in an endless caravan of wagons and horses. At the time he could not even say good-morning in the language of Castile. But tomorrow he will choose it to say goodbye.

  “Oh, Jesus!” will be his last words.

  (41 and 116)

  1559: Mexico City

  The Mourners

  The eagle of the Austrias
opens his golden wings against the clear sky of the Mexican plateau. On a black cloth, surrounded by flags, glitters the crown. The catafalque renders homage to Charles V and also to death, which has conquered so invincible a monarch.

  The crown, an exact replica of the one that adorned the emperor in Europe, has toured the streets of Mexico. On a damask cushion it was borne in procession. The multitude prayed and chanted behind it while the bells of all the churches rang out the death toll. The chief nobles paraded on horseback in mourning, black brocades, black velvet cloaks embroidered with gold and silver; and beneath a canopy, the archbishop, the bishops, and their spectacular miters broke through clouds of incense.

  For several nights the tailors have not slept. The entire colony is dressed in mourning.

  In the slums, the Aztecs are in mourning, too. They have been for months, nearly a year. The plague is exterminating them wholesale. A fever never known before the conquest draws blood from the nose and eyes and kills.

  (28)

  Advice of the Old Aztec Wise Men

  Now that you see with your eyes,

  take notice.

  See how it is here: there is no joy,

  there is no happiness.

  Here on earth is the place of many tears,

  the place where breath gives up

  and where are known so well

  depression and bitterness.

  An obsidian wind blows and swoops

  over us.

  The earth is the place of painful joy,

  of joy that pricks.

  But even though it were thus,

  though it were true that suffering is all,

  even if things were thus on the earth,

  must we always go with fear?

  must we forever tremble?

  must we live forever weeping?

  So that we may not always go with groans,

  so that sadness may not ever saturate us,

  Our Father has given us

  smiles, dreams, food,

  our strength,

  and finally

  the act of love,

  which sows people.

  (110)

  1560: Huexotzingo

  The Reward

  The native chiefs of Huexotzingo now bear the names of their new lords. They are called Felipe de Mendoza, Hernando de Meneses, Miguel de Alvarado, Diego de Chaves, or Mateo de la Corona. But they write in their own Náhuatl and in that language send a long letter to the king of Spain: Unfortunates we, your poor vassals of Huexotzingo …

  They explain to Philip II that they cannot reach him in any other way, because they don’t have the price of the journey, and they tell their story by letter. How shall we speak? Who will speak for us? Unfortunates we.

  They never made war on the Spaniards. They walked twenty leagues to Hernán Cortès and embraced him, fed him, served him, and took charge of his sick soldiers. They gave him men and arms and timber to build the brigantines that assaulted Tenochtitlán. After the Aztec capital fell, the Huexotzingans fought with Cortés in the conquest of Michoacán, Jalisco, Colhuacan, Pánuco, Oaxaca, Tehuantepec; and Guatemala. Many died. And afterward, when they told us to break the stones and burn the carvings that we worshiped, we did it, and destroyed our temples … Whatever they ordered, we obeyed.

  Huexotzingo was an independent kingdom when the Spaniards came. They had never paid tribute to the Aztecs. Our fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors did not know what tribute was and paid it to no one.

  Now, however, the Spaniards are demanding such high tribute in money and in corn that we declare before Your Majesty that little time will pass before our city of Huexotzingo disappears and dies.

  (120)

  1560: Michoacán

  Vasco de Quiroga

  Primitive Christianity, primitive communism: the bishop of Michoacán draws up ordinances for his evangelical communities. He was inspired in founding them by the Utopia of Thomas More, by the biblical prophets, and by the ancient traditions of America’s Indians.

  The communities created by Vasco de Quiroga, where no one is master of anyone or anything and neither hunger nor money is known, will not multiply throughout Mexico as he wished. The Council of the Indies will never take the foolish bishop’s projects seriously nor even glance at the books that he obstinately recommends. But here utopia has returned to America, where it originated. Thomas More’s chimera has been incarnated in the small communal world of Michoacán; and in times to come the Indians here will remember Vasco de Quiroga as their own—the dreamer who riveted his eyes on a hallucination to see beyond the time of infamy.

  (227)

  1561: Villa de los Bergantines

  The First Independence of America

  They crowned him yesterday. Curious monkeys trooped up among the trees. Fernando de Guzmán’s mouth dripped guanábana juice, and there were suns in his eyes. One after the other, the soldiers knelt down before the throne of sticks and straw, kissed the hand of the elect, and swore fealty. Then they signed the declaration with a name or an X, all who were not women or servants or Indians or blacks. The scribe made it official, and independence was proclaimed.

  The seekers of El Dorado, lost in midjungle, now have their own monarch. Nothing binds them to Spain except resentment. They have repudiated vassalage to the king across the sea: “I don’t know him!” cried Lope de Aguirre yesterday, all bone and fury, raising his sword covered with mildew. “I don’t know him or want to know him, nor to have him nor obey him!”

  In the village’s biggest hut the court is installed. By the light of candles, Prince Ferdinand eats endless cassava buns spread with honey. He is served by his pages, cup and ewer bearer, and valet; between buns he gives orders to his secretaries, dictates decrees to his scribes, and grants audiences and favors. The royal treasurer, chaplain, chief majordomo, and steward-taster wear tattered doublets and have swollen hands and split lips. The sergeant at arms is swarthy-skinned Lope de Aguirre, lame in one leg, one-eyed, almost a dwarf, who conspires by night and supervises the brigantine construction by day.

  Ax- and hammerblows ring out. The Amazon currents have ground their ships to pieces, but ahead two new keels rise on the sand. The jungle offers good timber. They have made bellows out of horses’ hides; nails, bolts, and hinges out of horseshoes.

  Tortured by mosquitos and gnats, smothered by humid and fever-laden vapors, the men wait for the ships to grow. They eat grass and vulture meat, without salt. No dogs or horses are left, and the fishhooks bring up nothing but mud and decayed algae, but no one in the camp doubts that the hour of revenge has come. They left Peru months ago in search of the lake where according to legend there are solid gold idols as big as boys, and now they want to return to Peru on a war footing. They won’t spend another day in pursuit of the promised land, because they realize that they already found it and are sick of cursing their bad luck. They will sail the Amazon, emerge into the ocean, occupy Margarita Island, invade Venezuela and Panama …

  Those who sleep dream of the silver of Potosí. Aguirre, who never closes his remaining eye, sees it awake.

  (123 and 164)

  1561: Nueva Valencia del Rey

  Aguirre

  At center stage, ax in hand, appears Lope de Aguirre surrounded by dozens of mirrors. Outlined on the backdrop, the profile of King Philip II, black, enormous.

  Lope de Aguirre (to the audience): On the road of our defeat, passing through death and misadventure, we took more than ten months to reach the mouth of the Amazon, which is a great, fearsome, and ill-starred river. Then we took possession of Margarita Island. There I cashed in twenty-five traitors on gallows or garrote. And then we made our way onto the mainland. King Philip’s soldiers are trembling with fright! Soon we’ll leave Venezuela … Soon we’ll be entering the kingdom of Peru in triumph! (He turns and confronts his own pitiful image in one of the mirrors.) I crowned Fernando de Guzmán king on the Amazon River! (Raises his ax and splits the mirror.) I crowned him king and I killed him! Same w
ith his captain of the guard and the lieutenant general and four captains! (As he speaks he smashes all the mirrors one after the other.) Same with his head steward and his chaplain! … And with a woman who was in on the plot against me, and that fellow born in Greece who thought himself such a big shot, and an admiral … and six more of their allies! … And I appointed new captains and a sergeant major! They wanted to kill me and I hanged them! (Pulverizes the last of the mirrors.) All of them! All of them! … (He sits, almost suffocating, on the ground covered with glass. The ax held high in his fists, his eyes astray. Long silence.) As a lad I crossed the sea to Peru because I was worth more with a lance in my hand … A quarter of a century! … Mysteries, miseries … I dug out whole cemeteries to get silver and gold for others … I put up gallows in the middle of unborn cities … I hunted down crowds of people on my horse … Indians fleeing in terror through the flames … Gentlemen with fancy titles and borrowed silk clothes, sons of something or other, sons of nobody, agonizing in the jungle, frothing at the mouth, eating dirt, blood poisoned by arrows … Up in the mountains, warriors in steel armor pierced right through by blizzards more violent than any arquebus volley … A lot of them found graves in the bellies of vultures … A lot ended up as yellow as the gold they were hunting for … Yellow skin, yellow eyes … And the gold … (Drops his ax. Painfully opens his hands, which are like claws. Shows his palms.) Vanished … Gold turned into shadow or dew … (Looks down incredulously. Long silence. Suddenly he rises. Back to the audience, raises his bony fist toward the huge outline of Philip II, projected with his pointed beard against the backdrop.) Damn few of you kings go to hell, because there’s damn few of you! (Walks toward backdrop, dragging his lame leg.) Ungrateful bastard! I lost my body defending you against the rebels in Peru! I gave you a leg and an eye and these hands that aren’t much use to me! Now the rebel is me! Rebel till death for your ungratefulness! (Faces audience, unsheathes his sword.) Me, prince of the rebels! Lope de Aguirre the Pilgrim, Wrath of God, chief of the cripples! We don’t need you, king of Spain! (Colored lights go on at various points on the stage.) We mustn’t leave any minister of yours alive! (Sword in hand, lunges at a beam of reddish light.) Judges, governors, presidents, viceroys! War to the death against all court whores! (The beam of light stays in place, indifferent to the sword cutting it.) Usurpers! Thieves! (The sword wounds the air.) You have destroyed the Indies! (Attacks beam of golden light.) Lawyers, notaries, ink-shitters! How long must we endure your robberies in these lands won by us? (Sword slashes beam of white light.) Monks, bishops, archbishops! You won’t even bury a poor Indian! For penitence you keep a dozen girls in the kitchen! Traffickers! Traffickers in sacraments! Swindlers! (The sword’s futile assaults on unblinking beams of light, which multiply across the stage, continue. Aguirre begins to lose strength and looks ever more alone and insignificant.)