While I was reading Cherrie Moraga’s, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, I came across this quote: “It cost me a great deal to find their stories, but without my gods – Coatlicue, the mother of creation and destruction; Coyolxauhqui, her dismembered daughter…without these icons of collective MeXicana sedition, my criminal acts as a Xicana dyke writer would have no precedent, no history, and ultimately no consequence.” Since I do not know much about Aztec gods/ goddesses, these names drew my attention. I wanted to find out what these female deities represented to the Aztecs.
Coatlicue is the Aztec mother goddess of creation. She is also known as Teteoinan, “the Mother of Gods”, Toci, “our grandmother”, and Cihuacoatl, “the Lady of the serpent”, the patron of women who die in childbirth. The goddess’s name comes from the Nahuatl language, which means “the one with the skirt of serpents.” Therefore, the image of Coatlicue is represented as a woman wearing a skirt of snakes, and her face is also that of a snake. The snakes symbolize fertility. Her breasts hang flat (from the nursing of her children), her necklace is made of hands, hearts, and skulls (from all the corpses she has fed on), and her hands and feet are claws (used for digging graves) (Britannica).
According to the myth, Coatlicue was magically impregnated while still a virgin by an obsidian knife and gave birth to Coyolxauhqui and 400 other children. After some time, while she was sweeping a temple, she became pregnant again by a ball of feather that fell from the sky. Her children were enraged by her pregnancy because a goddess could only give birth to one group of divinity. Coyolxauhqui then convince all her siblings to kill their mother. Amidst all the commotion, Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, and he came out fully-grown and armored for battle. To protect his mother, he murdered his brothers and dismembered Coyolxauhqui. Huitzilopochtli threw Coyolxauhqui’s head into the sky and it became the moon, she was then known as the goddess of the moon (Aztec creation).
Referring back to Moraga’s quote, I believe she admires these goddesses because they are strong female identities found in Chicana ancient history. It is evident that issues of sex, fertility, and power in women date back to ancient times. Coatlicue is a maternal figure that struggled and resisted against external forces. It is similar to the struggles the Chicanas experienced during the movement and still continue to experience.
References:
“Aztec Creation Myths.” Crystalinks. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.crystalinks.com/azteccreation.html>.
“Coatlicue.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/123205/Coatlicue>.
Moraga, Cherrie L. “Indigena as Scribe/ 2005.” A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000-2010. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011. 95. Print.
Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coatlicue