aztec mythology – CHST 404 – Chicana Feminisms

Coatlicue: Mother Goddess

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

Coyolxauhqui : Aztec Goddess

Like the use of Aztec symbols in the Chicano movement and Chicano art, Chicanas have resurrected an old symbol from Aztec mythology: Coyolxauhqui. In An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, she is described as the evil older sister of Huitzilopochtli (the national god of the Mexicas), as well as one of the major gods of Aztec mythology. Her mother, Coatlicue (mother goddess of the earth, “Serpent Skirt”) became pregnant after tucking a tuft of feathers under her/div>

bosom. Embarrassed by this dishonor, Coyolxauhqui went ahead and lead her 400 younger brothers (a.k.a. the Centzon Huitznahua) to kill their mother at the top of the hill of Coatepec. Once there, they managed to kill their mother right as Huitzilopochtli burst from the womb, fully armored, and attacked his siblings in defense of himself. His borhters were routed, and Coyolxauhqui was decapitated, dismembered, and thrown down the hill. The battle would later be re-enacted as part of the ceremony that was the ritual of heart sacrifice practiced on a large scale at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. Decapitated victims would be thrown down the steps along with their bodies.

The first findings of images of Coyolxauhqui occurred in 1978. A massive disk with her image carved into it was found at the base of the Templo Mayor. In Tenochtitlan, location of the Templo and capital of the Aztec empire, a depiction of her severed body (possibly the same disk that was found) was kept at the edge of the city as a warning to visitors or possible invaders. Another large sculpture of her that is presented only as the head of Coyolxauhqui, demonstrates what she represented through the images carved into her head, face, and base of the entire piece. Much of her costume and iconography appears to be derived from the patron of Xochimilco: Chantico, goddess of the hearth.

According to the researchers at the J Paul Getty Museum, the symbols on her cheeks (as seen in other images of her) are the “coyolli” (bells) which she is named after, the top disks are the symbols for gold.The closed eyes seen in the statue, depict her as being dead. The triumph of Huitzilopochtli represents the rise of the Aztec people. The symbols on her ears and mouth signify the agricultural and solar cycles, as well as the element of fire. The fire gives Coyolxauhqui themes of war and destruction. Her headdress represents her noble status, while the soft feather images carved at the back of her head indicate sacrifice–the sacrifice of the goddess for the Aztec people. The base of the statue which can’t be seen when on display, also has carvings that embody the conflict between opposites at the center of Aztec mythology and cosmology; e.g. fire and water, creation and destruction. Although she is often thought of as goddess of the moon, recent study suggests that she may in fact be the goddess of the milky way.

Additional Sources:

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/aztec/interactive/index.html

Miller, Mary Ellen., and Karl A. Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011. Print.

Image source:

http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/aztec/head-of-coyolxauhqui-from.html

La Leyenda de La Llorona

The story of La Llorona is one of those legends from Mexico that has crossed the border to the Chicano community, largely due to its support through oral history. Many members of my family and friends who know the story, originally heard it through word of mouth. I heard it first, like many other children, as a story of warning from the adults in my family. The way I heard it, a young couple who lived in a small village in Mexico, had just had two boy twins. Soon after, the man left without a trace. The woman, so upset over her husband’s disappearance, ended up drowning her newborn children in the nearby river. Eventually the grief and the guilt ended up killing her. As a result, her ghost haunted the same river where she could be heard late at night, to this day, screaming out loud, “Ay mis hijos!” If any of us or my cousins found ourselves outside, late at night, La Llorona would snatch us up as her children and drown us.

My mother on the other hand, heard it from her friends when they shared scary stories from their hometown. The story had been appropriated, as it often was, by the small city in San Luis. Thus the story was told as having happened “to a friend of a friend” who had seen her in the nearby river. She was said to be found weeping, or flying over houses in her white garb. She admitted to never having reconfirmed it within her family, although the legend was brought up later in one of her elementary school books that cited it as an example of legends in the culture and part of literature. A friend of my mom’s, from an older generation, stated that she heard a version of the story set in the Colombian era. She’d heard that the woman was an “india” who fell in love with a Spanish “general.” He did not lover her back. Thus she drowned her children thinking they were the source of his dislike. Feeling guilty for what she had done, she committed suicide. Her soul then grieved and cried for her children.

‘The Spirit of La Llorona’, a site dedicated to La Llorona, presents 4 primary versions, and a timeline linking the historical figure, La Malinche, to the tale of La Llorona. One of the versions in the site revolves around the idea of La Llorona as a virgin (invoking ideas of the Virgin Mary) who had gotten pregnant without “having been with a man.” Her father ended up throwing the baby into the river. The mother disappeared and was soon followed by apparitions in the river of a young woman holding a child, weeping, still seen to this day.

Film adaptations of La Llorona have been made, including a recently animated film from Mexico: ‘La Leyenda de la Llorona’ released on October 21, 2011. The 2007 version, ‘The Cry: La Llorona’ set, and made in the United States, has adapted its own version of the history of Malinche. This history can also be found in ‘The Spirit of La Llorona’ website. It places La Malinche as a woman who killed her own twin boys the she had had with Hernán Cortés after one of the gods told her that if she let him take them back to Spain, one of them would return to kill the rest of her people. As a matter of fact, Malinche, born at the turn of the 16th century from a noble Nahua family, was later presented as a slave to Hernán Cortés. From slave she went to translator, then mistress, and bore his son, Martín Cortés (although he had another son by another woman, of the same name). Martín Cortés sailed to Spain with his father, then back to Mexico, before being exiled to Spain where he married and eventually passed away.

Another origin given to the legend of La Llorona dates even further back in Aztec mythology with Cihuacoatl, the “woman-snake” and goddess of midwifery. She is said to have been the first woman cited near a river crying for her children, the Aztecs. It was later interpreted as an omen of the coming of the conquistadors and the massacre of the natives of Mexico.

The Spirit of La Llorona cite can be found here, I highly recommend navigating through it-
http://www.lallorona.com/La_index.asp

The recent animated film (in Spanish) –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE0a3hvBaFQ&feature=related

Additional Sources:

http://archive.suite101.com/article.cfm/history_mexico/58848

http://www.lallorona.com/1legend.html

Miller, Mary Ellen., and Karl A. Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011. Print.