Now, let's try to get inside the mind of the Mexica, or the Aztecs, shall we? Once again, we will begin with a process of elimination of what they didn't have at their convenience:
No computers, no phones, no TV's, no movies, no radios, no electricity, no toilet paper, no wheels, no air travel, no automobiles, no awareness of peoples or countries outside of Mexico or South America, no internet (which means no Google, YouTube, Facebook, Netflicks, Tinder, etcetera), limited food selections and availability, no democracy, no human rights, no public health care, no tolerance of diversity.
Unlike the Spanish, they did have chocolate, but only the priests and nobles were allowed to eat it, but it was likely kind of gross given that it was drunk as an unsweetened beverage. Also unlike the Spanish they were clean, bathed frequently and had running potable water to supply their superiorly organized cities. Like the Spanish, their society was severely regimental in an inflexible and unforgiving social hierarchy. Like the Spanish, they lived essentially under a theocracy and the lower classes of serfs and slaves owed their lives to their ruthless and unpitying overlords.
Their religions were decidedly different but for the way they conducted them. Both used religion as an excuse for bloodshed: the Spanish burned and garrotted heretics, witches and Jews; the Aztecs offered to their gods as human sacrifices anyone they didn't happen to like. Both peoples were incredibly warlike and bloodthirsty and both cultures carried in them already the collective trauma from multiple invasions.
A young Mexica, depending on gender and social class, had limited options, of course. The nobles had the best life, were wealthy, well-fed and powerful. Their word was law. If you were a young Mexica born into this caste, then the world was your oyster offering blue pearls aplenty. As I already said, your food choices would be limited: maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, cactus, dog meat, turkey, fish and wild game, as well as whatever native fruits and vegetables they cultivated. You of course had the greatest abundance and quality at your disposal, and you were also allowed to drink Theobroma, or chocolate, unsweetened unfortunately, the food of the gods.
If you were a young priest you would be learning all the intricacies of the heavenly bodies and forecasting the will of the gods and determining how many would be slaughtered during the next ritual human sacrifice. You enjoyed the best of everything, with slaves aplenty to do your bidding, all of them potential food for your gods.
Nobles and priests alike were held to the strictest code of conduct, unlike the highborn Spaniards who swaggered all over Iberia and then in Latin America like one giant portable and terrifying frat boy party. The greatest expectations were held over the heads of the highest born Mexica and for violating the ethical norms the penalties were often severe and not infrequently mortal. More food for the gods.
If you were a merchant or artisan you still did pretty well and were highly regarded. Your trade, your craft, was your life. Likewise for the peasants and farmers, and of course there were the serfs and the slaves, always dispensable and often a ready supply of food for the gods.
The women, like the Spanish women, were subservient to men and the strictest codes of modesty were enforced, though I also understand there was a much freer intermingling between genders than for the Spanish. Likewise, homosexuality, if not recognized, was tolerated and accepted.
I can only imagine how life must have been for the disabled, the chronically sick and the mentally unstable. I cannot imagine any of them surviving long from birth.
So, these were scrupulously clean people, whose lives in every detail were circumscribed and ruled by their gods, who worked hard with their hands and did much to create beauty despite the environment of death and dread they lived in. Even if victims of trauma, it is hard to believe that they were bowed by trauma as they strove through their own creativity and industry to craft a life that seemed worth living to themselves and their descendants.
Monday, 7 August 2017
Sunday, 6 August 2017
Historical Perspective And Collective Trauma 2
The Spaniards of the early sixteenth century did not know that they were living with collective trauma. Living conditions that we would never imagine for ourselves nor for our loved ones or neighbours were accepted as normal and every day. Death was always close at hand. Life was embraced and celebrated as a very conditional given. Those people must have been extremely passionate, in their lives, their work, their loves, their rage. I do not believe that the Spanish of that era took life for granted the way we do in our comfortable and cossetted lives in the twenty-first century.
Death was always present. At birth, mother or child, or both, were often at risk and quite often both perished in the act of childbirth. There were no immunizations, nor practices of hygiene, medical or domestic. No one washed their hands. Only the strong survived infancy, childhood. In poorer families adequate nutrition was never a guarantee and there were no food banks or social safety nets. Apart from the charity of the church there was no recourse during food scarcity but to go hungry, starve and die.
Death surrounded and inhabited daily life. People died usually before their time from disease and years of neglect. Criminals were executed for the smallest offenses. And then there was the Inquisition. Not one single Spaniard grew up without witnessing and being touched by death. No one would ever have thought of this as trauma or as traumatizing. It was part of the natural order of things.
This isn't to say that these people weren't traumatized either, since simply getting used to horror and tragedy is no more than a coping strategy. You simply coped by living hard, drinking hard, loving hard, partying hard and fighting hard. Life was a matter of survival and people lived naturally in survival mode. This apparently has been the real norm for the vast majority of humans that have lived throughout the tens of thousands of years of our species' troubled history.
So, given that we are so much more enlightened, educated, knowledgeable and privileged and sheltered from the horrible realities of life, does this make us somehow better than they? I would assume that these people who lived in other times and survived such horrors that we could scarcely imagine were gifted also with a kind of visceral brute strength that became necessary to their survival. I know by my own experience of life which, for a white person living in North America in the early part of the twenty-first century, I have seen, experienced and been touched by more than my share of death and horror. People like me, we have what I call a horrible knowledge of life. It is impossible to communicate with average middle class people, much less expect them to understand the things that have been real to us, such waking nightmares from which they have always recoiled in terror. And naturally they tend to recoil from us. But this same horrible knowledge of life, for people who lived in earlier and less forgiving times, was not only normal, but necessary to their survival and by extension our own survival.
These were the people, young men of limited education and world knowledge, extreme ignorance of other peoples, bred in hate and intolerance for people different from them, all consumed with a hunger for glory, power and riches, who embarked on those small ships to shed blood and spread the disease of European civilization to the people of the Americas.
They were constrained by greed and motivated by the shutting down of trade routes from the Orient, since Constantinople had fallen to the Muslims. Mexico and South America would be just the dragon's lair of gold, pearls and diamonds, awaiting their consumption and in turn to consume the likes of them.
Death was always present. At birth, mother or child, or both, were often at risk and quite often both perished in the act of childbirth. There were no immunizations, nor practices of hygiene, medical or domestic. No one washed their hands. Only the strong survived infancy, childhood. In poorer families adequate nutrition was never a guarantee and there were no food banks or social safety nets. Apart from the charity of the church there was no recourse during food scarcity but to go hungry, starve and die.
Death surrounded and inhabited daily life. People died usually before their time from disease and years of neglect. Criminals were executed for the smallest offenses. And then there was the Inquisition. Not one single Spaniard grew up without witnessing and being touched by death. No one would ever have thought of this as trauma or as traumatizing. It was part of the natural order of things.
This isn't to say that these people weren't traumatized either, since simply getting used to horror and tragedy is no more than a coping strategy. You simply coped by living hard, drinking hard, loving hard, partying hard and fighting hard. Life was a matter of survival and people lived naturally in survival mode. This apparently has been the real norm for the vast majority of humans that have lived throughout the tens of thousands of years of our species' troubled history.
So, given that we are so much more enlightened, educated, knowledgeable and privileged and sheltered from the horrible realities of life, does this make us somehow better than they? I would assume that these people who lived in other times and survived such horrors that we could scarcely imagine were gifted also with a kind of visceral brute strength that became necessary to their survival. I know by my own experience of life which, for a white person living in North America in the early part of the twenty-first century, I have seen, experienced and been touched by more than my share of death and horror. People like me, we have what I call a horrible knowledge of life. It is impossible to communicate with average middle class people, much less expect them to understand the things that have been real to us, such waking nightmares from which they have always recoiled in terror. And naturally they tend to recoil from us. But this same horrible knowledge of life, for people who lived in earlier and less forgiving times, was not only normal, but necessary to their survival and by extension our own survival.
These were the people, young men of limited education and world knowledge, extreme ignorance of other peoples, bred in hate and intolerance for people different from them, all consumed with a hunger for glory, power and riches, who embarked on those small ships to shed blood and spread the disease of European civilization to the people of the Americas.
They were constrained by greed and motivated by the shutting down of trade routes from the Orient, since Constantinople had fallen to the Muslims. Mexico and South America would be just the dragon's lair of gold, pearls and diamonds, awaiting their consumption and in turn to consume the likes of them.
Saturday, 5 August 2017
Historical Perspective And Collective Trauma 1
There is an awful lot to bite off here and I really don't have all the information at hand to be able to provide something that is historically complete or accurate, Gentle Reader, plus I wasn't there when it happened, and unless some of you are as old as Methuselah, chances are that none of you were, either.
Our perspective and experience of life in the twenty-first century anywhere in the First World is going to be decidedly different from that of the Spanish or the Mexica early in the sixteenth. To try to get a grasp of how different we are let me enumerate what we have now that they were lacking, besides almost everything.
First of all, the world now is a much smaller place than it was five hundred years ago. There is not one single corner of real estate anywhere on this planet that isn't somehow known or hasn't been colonized or at least successfully visited, except perhaps for North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. I just saw a short video of this island. The inhabitants are thought to be direct descendants of our earliest ancestors from when they emerged out of Africa and they are thought to have been on the island for more than sixty thousand years. Almost no one who has visited has lived to tell of the experience, with very rare exceptions, given their hostility to all outsiders.
Apart from North Sentinel Island, though, every square foot of land on this planet is mapped and known.
For people living five hundred years ago, almost anything outside of their own familiar shores and borders was considered a novelty, or a threat or an opportunity, or all of the above. For the Spanish, their knowledge of the world was limited to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. There was limited awareness of India and China though those lands were basically known for their markets of spices, gold and fragrant wood. Little was known of the inhabitants or their customs, nor was the curiosity of your average Spaniard much excited by the notion of knowing about people of other races. Being not Christian or Catholic, or course they were held in contempt as inferiors and infidels. There is no need to explore much their already famous hatred of Jews and Muslims. They weren't fond of Protestants either.
Literacy was not universal and only a small percentage of people could read and write, being members of the clergy, the aristocracy and the mercantile class and perhaps some artisans. Workers and peasants, who made up the population majority, were generally illiterate.
The Roman Catholic Church was the dominant cultural as well as religious institution. It was in many ways like living under a theocracy. Women were forced to cover up and lived as chattels at the behest and orders of men. Human rights were unknown and slavery was an accepted reality of life.
As well as living in relative ignorance and under tremendous social and institutionalized oppression there was no public health care. Most diseases were incurable and doctors and healers were regarded with suspicion as witches and devil worshippers, and were usually fodder for the flames in public burnings. Infant mortality was the main form of birth control. If you did not conform completely, in every detail, to the whims and dictates of church and king your life would be constantly in danger. Outsiders were feared and hated. Spain likely still carried the internalized stigma of eight centuries of Muslim domination and even the successful battles that finally expelled them all out of the country likely didn't put to flight that shadow of victimization. So, the Spanish projected their experience of victimhood, internally upon Muslims, Jews, heretics and alleged witches, and externally upon the Mexica, the Inca and all other indigenous peoples in the Americas with the misfortune of finding themselves in their path.
They did not have all the toys of technology that are now taken for granted. If a sixteenth century Spaniard were to drop in and visit downtown Vancouver today they would be even more scandalized than Cortes and his thugs were at the strange glory that greeted them in the courts of Tenochtitlan. The sight of dumb millennials almost getting run over by cars while staring at their smart phones would be utterly untranslatable to them in any language. Phones, computers, television, radios, movies, cars, buses, electricity, firearms other than their simple muskets, vaccines, universal health care, birth control, toilet paper, the very concept of hygiene, running water, flush toilets, all the food from all over the world that we enjoy as our birthright, airplanes, microwave ovens, stereos, CD's; not to mention universal literacy, access to information from all over the world about everything that is happening and has ever happened in the world: social democracy, human rights, gender equality, secularism, queer rights, multiculturalism, universal education and literacy, to name but a few of the many perks, privileges, treats and features of postmodern life that we all take for granted. Not to mention mental health care, our concepts of mental illness and treatment...
And this also brings me to how we understand trauma. They had no concept of trauma because they didn't have any of those other things. Theirs, like every other culture and civilization of their era was always but one pillage, siege, war or famine away from extinction, putting them in chronic survival mode. In our first world privilege we have absolutely no idea what it must have been like for them.
I will write further on this theme tomorrow.
Our perspective and experience of life in the twenty-first century anywhere in the First World is going to be decidedly different from that of the Spanish or the Mexica early in the sixteenth. To try to get a grasp of how different we are let me enumerate what we have now that they were lacking, besides almost everything.
First of all, the world now is a much smaller place than it was five hundred years ago. There is not one single corner of real estate anywhere on this planet that isn't somehow known or hasn't been colonized or at least successfully visited, except perhaps for North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. I just saw a short video of this island. The inhabitants are thought to be direct descendants of our earliest ancestors from when they emerged out of Africa and they are thought to have been on the island for more than sixty thousand years. Almost no one who has visited has lived to tell of the experience, with very rare exceptions, given their hostility to all outsiders.
Apart from North Sentinel Island, though, every square foot of land on this planet is mapped and known.
For people living five hundred years ago, almost anything outside of their own familiar shores and borders was considered a novelty, or a threat or an opportunity, or all of the above. For the Spanish, their knowledge of the world was limited to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. There was limited awareness of India and China though those lands were basically known for their markets of spices, gold and fragrant wood. Little was known of the inhabitants or their customs, nor was the curiosity of your average Spaniard much excited by the notion of knowing about people of other races. Being not Christian or Catholic, or course they were held in contempt as inferiors and infidels. There is no need to explore much their already famous hatred of Jews and Muslims. They weren't fond of Protestants either.
Literacy was not universal and only a small percentage of people could read and write, being members of the clergy, the aristocracy and the mercantile class and perhaps some artisans. Workers and peasants, who made up the population majority, were generally illiterate.
The Roman Catholic Church was the dominant cultural as well as religious institution. It was in many ways like living under a theocracy. Women were forced to cover up and lived as chattels at the behest and orders of men. Human rights were unknown and slavery was an accepted reality of life.
As well as living in relative ignorance and under tremendous social and institutionalized oppression there was no public health care. Most diseases were incurable and doctors and healers were regarded with suspicion as witches and devil worshippers, and were usually fodder for the flames in public burnings. Infant mortality was the main form of birth control. If you did not conform completely, in every detail, to the whims and dictates of church and king your life would be constantly in danger. Outsiders were feared and hated. Spain likely still carried the internalized stigma of eight centuries of Muslim domination and even the successful battles that finally expelled them all out of the country likely didn't put to flight that shadow of victimization. So, the Spanish projected their experience of victimhood, internally upon Muslims, Jews, heretics and alleged witches, and externally upon the Mexica, the Inca and all other indigenous peoples in the Americas with the misfortune of finding themselves in their path.
They did not have all the toys of technology that are now taken for granted. If a sixteenth century Spaniard were to drop in and visit downtown Vancouver today they would be even more scandalized than Cortes and his thugs were at the strange glory that greeted them in the courts of Tenochtitlan. The sight of dumb millennials almost getting run over by cars while staring at their smart phones would be utterly untranslatable to them in any language. Phones, computers, television, radios, movies, cars, buses, electricity, firearms other than their simple muskets, vaccines, universal health care, birth control, toilet paper, the very concept of hygiene, running water, flush toilets, all the food from all over the world that we enjoy as our birthright, airplanes, microwave ovens, stereos, CD's; not to mention universal literacy, access to information from all over the world about everything that is happening and has ever happened in the world: social democracy, human rights, gender equality, secularism, queer rights, multiculturalism, universal education and literacy, to name but a few of the many perks, privileges, treats and features of postmodern life that we all take for granted. Not to mention mental health care, our concepts of mental illness and treatment...
And this also brings me to how we understand trauma. They had no concept of trauma because they didn't have any of those other things. Theirs, like every other culture and civilization of their era was always but one pillage, siege, war or famine away from extinction, putting them in chronic survival mode. In our first world privilege we have absolutely no idea what it must have been like for them.
I will write further on this theme tomorrow.
Friday, 4 August 2017
The Sexy Latino
I really feel among the least qualified persons to be writing about this, given that, well, sex just doesn't really interest me a lot. No, I'm not lying, and Gentle Reader, please and kindly pull that dirty little mind of yours out of the gutter! Thank you.
Of course, we all know the familiar cliches of the hot blooded Latinos, the Latin lover (or gigolo!) Hot and sexy Salsa and other Latin music. The partying, the revelling, the debauchery, the mythical insatiable Latin male and the equally mythical insatiable Latin female.
I am going to hazard a guess here that a lot of the alleged Latin American sexiness is really a childish or adolescent reaction to historical and cultural sexual repression. Latino culture owes much of its shape, texture and fabric to the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most historical machines of sexual repression. Good muchachas criollas (which is to say, the good Latinas of pure European extraction) always kept their legs crossed and their mouths firmly sealed until the wedding night. Los muchachos criollos (Latino boys of pure European extraction) not so much.
Of course the traditional double standard reigned supreme. The young ladies kept themselves absolutely intact until their newly minted young husbands could totally embarrass themselves on the wedding night (I believe it was Oscar Wilde who coined after his first visit there that Niagara Falls must be the young bride's second great disappointment). The young men were expected to sow their wild oats and gain a bit of sexual experience before the wedding night, for which reason existed whores, indigenous women and Mestizas. Of course, no one of their high social standing gave so much as a tinker's damn about the poor marginalized women who were expected to stand in (or lie in)as practice mounts before the big day. No one gave a thought about how those poor girls must have felt being used, exploited, being made to feel dirty, vile and unwanted by their young white swains. And there were also the many bastard children born of those unions, many of whom formed the ancestry of the Latino Mestizaje.
Institutionalized rape along with the puritanical rigid mores of the Catholic Church seem to have provided the backbone of Latino sexuality. Given the traditional Catholicism and the agrarian culture it would stand to reason that the standards and expectations would be very conservative and extremely heterocentric, which is also to say heterosexist, or should I say blatantly homophobic. Let's keep in mind here that the very concept of homosexuality was basically unknown until just over a hundred years ago.
In which case I sometimes wonder, what would it have been like during the first four hundred years of the existence of Latin America to be a queer man or woman. I understand that among the Aztec and Maya, and likely other indigenous cultures of the day, there was some allowance given to homosexuality, though cross-dressing was forbidden on pain of death. So then let's try to imagine a queer young Aztec man just when Cortes and his fellow Spaniards were marching and riding strange beasts (horses) into Tenochtitlan, the original Mexico City. To see those strange looking men with pale skins and beards. It must have been incredibly disturbing for them, to say the very least.
Let's call him Citlalli, which means star. He, Citlalli, would be perhaps a young priest and suddenly and fiercely enthralled with those strangely handsome, though foul-smelling since they never bathed men with beards.
One of them, we'll call him Juan, catches his eye. Juan, is not necessarily queer, but is subject to severe man-crushes, and this beautiful noble boy with the light brown skin and flawless lean musculature cannot leave his mind. They have caught each other's eye. There is no question of anything happening, since the Spanish are strictly heterocentric and would never so much as imagine the thought of two men loving each other. But those two men love each other.
Soon, Tenochtitlan is burned and destroyed, Citlalli is one of the fallen, though there is still life in him as he lies on the ground, bleeding, and peering imploringly at Juan as he raises his sword and lops of his head.
And so it has been throughout the sad and troubled history of Latin America, but for recent reforms and developments. I believe that Mexico City was one of the first jurisdictions to recognize and make legal same-sex marriage. This has since happened throughout Mexico and in other Latin American countries, but not in all of them. The major urban centres are naturally going to have the greatest concentrations of progressive folk, just like here in liberal and progressive Canada, and just like liberal and progressive Canada there will be more conservative and anti-gay people the further out you get into the rural zones.
Are Latinos sexier than other people? Well, how would I know and really why would I ask such a question? I will say this much. This is a culture founded on socially legitimized rape and religious sexual puritanism so I think what we really have to reckon with is an entire collective of survivors of sexual abuse. This isn't meant as a blanket judgment of all Latinos by the way. I am thinking here, rather, of cultural and historical trends that are still going to contain an enormous variation of experience and interpretation.
Of course, we all know the familiar cliches of the hot blooded Latinos, the Latin lover (or gigolo!) Hot and sexy Salsa and other Latin music. The partying, the revelling, the debauchery, the mythical insatiable Latin male and the equally mythical insatiable Latin female.
I am going to hazard a guess here that a lot of the alleged Latin American sexiness is really a childish or adolescent reaction to historical and cultural sexual repression. Latino culture owes much of its shape, texture and fabric to the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most historical machines of sexual repression. Good muchachas criollas (which is to say, the good Latinas of pure European extraction) always kept their legs crossed and their mouths firmly sealed until the wedding night. Los muchachos criollos (Latino boys of pure European extraction) not so much.
Of course the traditional double standard reigned supreme. The young ladies kept themselves absolutely intact until their newly minted young husbands could totally embarrass themselves on the wedding night (I believe it was Oscar Wilde who coined after his first visit there that Niagara Falls must be the young bride's second great disappointment). The young men were expected to sow their wild oats and gain a bit of sexual experience before the wedding night, for which reason existed whores, indigenous women and Mestizas. Of course, no one of their high social standing gave so much as a tinker's damn about the poor marginalized women who were expected to stand in (or lie in)as practice mounts before the big day. No one gave a thought about how those poor girls must have felt being used, exploited, being made to feel dirty, vile and unwanted by their young white swains. And there were also the many bastard children born of those unions, many of whom formed the ancestry of the Latino Mestizaje.
Institutionalized rape along with the puritanical rigid mores of the Catholic Church seem to have provided the backbone of Latino sexuality. Given the traditional Catholicism and the agrarian culture it would stand to reason that the standards and expectations would be very conservative and extremely heterocentric, which is also to say heterosexist, or should I say blatantly homophobic. Let's keep in mind here that the very concept of homosexuality was basically unknown until just over a hundred years ago.
In which case I sometimes wonder, what would it have been like during the first four hundred years of the existence of Latin America to be a queer man or woman. I understand that among the Aztec and Maya, and likely other indigenous cultures of the day, there was some allowance given to homosexuality, though cross-dressing was forbidden on pain of death. So then let's try to imagine a queer young Aztec man just when Cortes and his fellow Spaniards were marching and riding strange beasts (horses) into Tenochtitlan, the original Mexico City. To see those strange looking men with pale skins and beards. It must have been incredibly disturbing for them, to say the very least.
Let's call him Citlalli, which means star. He, Citlalli, would be perhaps a young priest and suddenly and fiercely enthralled with those strangely handsome, though foul-smelling since they never bathed men with beards.
One of them, we'll call him Juan, catches his eye. Juan, is not necessarily queer, but is subject to severe man-crushes, and this beautiful noble boy with the light brown skin and flawless lean musculature cannot leave his mind. They have caught each other's eye. There is no question of anything happening, since the Spanish are strictly heterocentric and would never so much as imagine the thought of two men loving each other. But those two men love each other.
Soon, Tenochtitlan is burned and destroyed, Citlalli is one of the fallen, though there is still life in him as he lies on the ground, bleeding, and peering imploringly at Juan as he raises his sword and lops of his head.
And so it has been throughout the sad and troubled history of Latin America, but for recent reforms and developments. I believe that Mexico City was one of the first jurisdictions to recognize and make legal same-sex marriage. This has since happened throughout Mexico and in other Latin American countries, but not in all of them. The major urban centres are naturally going to have the greatest concentrations of progressive folk, just like here in liberal and progressive Canada, and just like liberal and progressive Canada there will be more conservative and anti-gay people the further out you get into the rural zones.
Are Latinos sexier than other people? Well, how would I know and really why would I ask such a question? I will say this much. This is a culture founded on socially legitimized rape and religious sexual puritanism so I think what we really have to reckon with is an entire collective of survivors of sexual abuse. This isn't meant as a blanket judgment of all Latinos by the way. I am thinking here, rather, of cultural and historical trends that are still going to contain an enormous variation of experience and interpretation.
Thursday, 3 August 2017
The Glitter Of Gold
Time to change the titles. I know, Gratitude was kind of fun to type one hundred forty-three times, and even if gratitude remains an ongoing theme and thread in my blogposts (I promise that it will) I think I was getting new-title lazy. So, this is about the lure of gold and of riches, or should I say, greed? Especially in terms of its ongoing influence over the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish thugs.
Yes, they were thugs. Had the Geneva Convention and UN charters that are widely and shamelessly flouted nowadays been in force during the Sixteenth Century the Spaniards would have been in deep doo-doo for all the nasty things they did to the native peoples of the Americas (as would the English. Hey, equal opportunity blaming only is allowed on this blog!). Oh, the finger-wagging! And, Oh, the public scolding! The shunning, the shaming! Had the covenants and charters of the UN and Geneva been in force five hundred years ago, as they are now, no quarter would have been spared to tell the Spanish how naughty they were, how absolutely not nice they were to all the native peoples that they slaughtered (and the English would have been made to feel equally bad!)
Spain of the Middle Ages was powerful, but not wealthy. They were a developing power, getting their chops as they chucked out the Muslims, imprisoned and tortured Jews, and rounded up and publicly burned heretics at the stake. Feeling strong and powerful, but wanting gold and resources(or, should we just say they were consumed by greed) King Fernando and Queen Isabel sent off Columbus to open up trade routes in the west with the Far East. They were in search of spices and gold. And whatever else their greedy little hands could scoop up.
Discovering America, Columbus and his lackeys found, not China, nor Japan (though it had been assumed otherwise) but the islands of the Caribbean, well-populated by people they never would have imagined. A few decades later, Cortes, then Pizarro were dispatched, respectively, to Mexico and Peru, in search of gold, conquest and souls for Holy Mother Church.
The greed of Spain (and England) for resources, was especially insatiable, particularly Mama Espana's rapacious greed for gold. They plundered and robbed the Americas of precious yellow metal, all to fatten their coffers and enrich their big war machine. The aboriginals of the Caribbean, the Aztecs of Mexico and the Inca of Peru, didn't quite get their lust for this shiny yellow rock. They agreed it was pretty, for which reason it adorned everything of value in their cities, temples and palaces, but to kill and risk being killed for its possession? A lousy, but admittedly beautiful metal?
Let us not forget that they were also representatives of Holy Mother Church and second (or maybe third) place to gold, they valued also the immortal native souls that they could somehow win as bounty for the Catholic Faith. So divorced were clergy and laity to the most basic commands of the Christian Gospel, while claiming to be God`s sole representatives on Earth.
Apparently some of the natives managed to beat these pale-skinned and unwashed foreign invaders with a brilliant little ruse. El Dorado. They told Columbus and his lackeys about other cities, hidden in the heart of inaccessible jungles and mountains in deepest South America. They were believed and countless expeditions of greedy Spaniards died in search of nonexistent cities of plunder, and at least momentarily, the local indigenous could be rid of them.
Yes, they were thugs. Had the Geneva Convention and UN charters that are widely and shamelessly flouted nowadays been in force during the Sixteenth Century the Spaniards would have been in deep doo-doo for all the nasty things they did to the native peoples of the Americas (as would the English. Hey, equal opportunity blaming only is allowed on this blog!). Oh, the finger-wagging! And, Oh, the public scolding! The shunning, the shaming! Had the covenants and charters of the UN and Geneva been in force five hundred years ago, as they are now, no quarter would have been spared to tell the Spanish how naughty they were, how absolutely not nice they were to all the native peoples that they slaughtered (and the English would have been made to feel equally bad!)
Spain of the Middle Ages was powerful, but not wealthy. They were a developing power, getting their chops as they chucked out the Muslims, imprisoned and tortured Jews, and rounded up and publicly burned heretics at the stake. Feeling strong and powerful, but wanting gold and resources(or, should we just say they were consumed by greed) King Fernando and Queen Isabel sent off Columbus to open up trade routes in the west with the Far East. They were in search of spices and gold. And whatever else their greedy little hands could scoop up.
Discovering America, Columbus and his lackeys found, not China, nor Japan (though it had been assumed otherwise) but the islands of the Caribbean, well-populated by people they never would have imagined. A few decades later, Cortes, then Pizarro were dispatched, respectively, to Mexico and Peru, in search of gold, conquest and souls for Holy Mother Church.
The greed of Spain (and England) for resources, was especially insatiable, particularly Mama Espana's rapacious greed for gold. They plundered and robbed the Americas of precious yellow metal, all to fatten their coffers and enrich their big war machine. The aboriginals of the Caribbean, the Aztecs of Mexico and the Inca of Peru, didn't quite get their lust for this shiny yellow rock. They agreed it was pretty, for which reason it adorned everything of value in their cities, temples and palaces, but to kill and risk being killed for its possession? A lousy, but admittedly beautiful metal?
Let us not forget that they were also representatives of Holy Mother Church and second (or maybe third) place to gold, they valued also the immortal native souls that they could somehow win as bounty for the Catholic Faith. So divorced were clergy and laity to the most basic commands of the Christian Gospel, while claiming to be God`s sole representatives on Earth.
Apparently some of the natives managed to beat these pale-skinned and unwashed foreign invaders with a brilliant little ruse. El Dorado. They told Columbus and his lackeys about other cities, hidden in the heart of inaccessible jungles and mountains in deepest South America. They were believed and countless expeditions of greedy Spaniards died in search of nonexistent cities of plunder, and at least momentarily, the local indigenous could be rid of them.
Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Gratitude 143
I love Mexican humour. It is rather similar to Spanish humour but for one significant detail. While the Spanish tend to laugh at everyone and everything, the Mexicans do that as well, but they, unlike the Spanish, also know how to laugh at themselves. The self-deprecating element, whether present or missing is by its very nature telling.
I think this matters because it could indicate just who is going to find what funny depending on whether they have been historically oppressed or historical oppressors. Bullies are incapable of laughing at themselves. I have never met a Spaniard with self-deprecating humour. Each of the many I have become acquainted with will laugh at everyone but their sweet precious selves. I have hope for the younger Spaniards but time will tell.
Each in their context, the Spanish and the Mexica were both bully nations. They were both warrior nations, and warrior nations, obsessed with their survival are not going to be much inclined to laugh at themselves and much less endure the laughter of others. Spain, fresh from driving out the last Moors and unconverted Jews from their precious part of the Iberian Peninsula, decided to turn into their own version of the occupying Moors and continue their theme of military domination and brutality in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. Humourless Spaniard met humourless Aztec in battle and only their superior armaments and war savvy guaranteed certain victory. I don't think anyone was laughing, except for the Spaniards at their victims of conquest.
A culture of institutional rape fostered the birth of half-indigenous children, the first Mestizaje, the progenitors of modern Latin America. I'm sure none of them were laughing. The Mestizos became increasingly isolated, distrusted by both their Spanish and indigenous relatives. Loathing bred self-loathing. Self-loathing is the cradle of self-deprecating humour and self-deprecating humour is indeed a powerful tonic for healing the injured soul as well as a formidable weapon against those who would oppress us.
Through humour, and especially the kind of self-deprecating humour that rises out of humiliation and marginalization, we rise above the misery of our oppressive circumstances. This doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to thrive. We just might. Or, the trauma of humiliation will never be entirely integrated or overcome, but it can still become a tool, a weapon even, towards our growth, recovery and healing.
Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Through humour, and especially the kind of self-deprecating humour that rises out of humiliation and marginalization, we rise above the misery of our oppressive circumstances. This doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to thrive. We just might. Or, the trauma of humiliation will never be entirely integrated or overcome, but it can still become a tool, a weapon even, towards our growth, recovery and healing.
Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Tuesday, 1 August 2017
Gratitude 142
I am grateful for the power of tears. I have long found it interesting how preoccupied we often are in appearing strong and in complete control of ourselves, especially in such situations in which any display of strong emotion would be not only perfectly justified, but also appropriate. In almost any Middle Eastern country, if a loved one is killed or murdered, all stops are out. Women and men wail and scream like exorcised demons at the funerals of their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. There is no sense of shame or embarrassment about letting go, letting it all out, no fear of being perceived as weak. Expressing grief over the death of a loved one is not viewed in some cultures as weakness, but as strength.
It`s rather different here in restrained Canada. If anyone cries at a funeral, it is done only in the most tasteful way. A little silent sniffling, a couple of tears, or absolute granite silence and faces to match. No emotion, please, we are Canadian. If you are faced with a terminal illness and you do it stoically, then you are lauded for your courage. You are battling cancer. Never a victim. And what they don't tell you is how relieved everyone is that you`re not showing emotion, since most Canadians are absolutely inept at handling genuine expressions of grief and loss.
When I was a child anger was the only acceptable emotion in my family. No one cried. Tears were a sign of weakness. Being weak, or seen as weak, was the cardinal sin. My parents were raised during the great Depression and Second World War. No one had time for the luxury of emotion. Life was hard and weakness was not tolerated. Only small children and women were allowed to cry. In the case of boys the "weakness" was shamed and beaten out of them. You had to be strong, a fighter, not a wimp, not a sissy. Life was a jungle, a battlefield and only the strong survived.
This must be very similar to the kind of thinking that drove the Spaniards and the Aztecs during the conquest of Mexico. Both nations were proud military powers fighting (so they believed) for their very existence. Always fighting, always killing, always snuffing out the tears until they were finally too battle hardened to feel any emotion outside of anger, rage, hate and wrath. Did Spanish conquistadores cry while falling from their horses in battle and waited for the spear, sword or axe to finish the job? Did sacrificial victims weep and plead for their lives as they climbed their longest march ever up the steep temple stairs? Did they weep as they were forced to lay on the altar? As the knife did its work and they felt their beating heart torn out?
We have no way of knowing. I find it interesting that here in emotionally restrained Canada, if a spouse or family member shows little or no emotion over the murder of a loved one they are considered immediately under suspicion. But many people, here in Canada anyway, have been trained from the cradle to restrain their emotions. We are not allowed to openly express the hurt and grief we are feeling. The cool, unemotional reaction is otherwise seen as an indication of strength.
The cultures of earlier times were formed often in harsh and unforgiving conditions. Only the strong survived. Violence as the way of reckoning with the opposition was never questioned, almost always celebrated. People still wept as allowed but I think that a general staunching of tears before they can flow does something to also staunch our humanity. Tears invite empathy, which can be difficult. I have sometimes heard standup comedians (always men!) joke that crying men never elicit empathy in other men, only scorn and contempt. That is a learned behaviour.
We need to unlearn our fear of tears. God gave us, men and women and others, tear ducts for a reason. If we can accept crying as a necessary, often important catharsis, then so much the better. We shed tears in order to rebalance ourselves. And sometimes, some of us need to weep harder and longer than others, without shame. I think that this learning to accept as valid the full venting and expression of emotions of grief, fear and loss, can do much to help us to unlearn the ways of violence. I have long believed that violence is often the result of refusing to cry.
I remember still the much weeping that I experienced during the eighties and nineties while I was coping with the hundreds of deaths around me during my work with people with AIDS, my mother's death, and many others. This was a particularly dark chapter, I think, for many of us. Even if this prolonged agony of grief and much weeping contributed to my experience of trauma, in a way it also eased things, and I believe has helped make me into a more complete and more compassionate human being.
Many people believe that violence is an essential component of human nature. I suppose this could be true and, despite evidence to the contrary, I often would prefer to not believe this. Whether or not this is the case, I think that human beings have a particular advantage over other animals. We have an advanced capacity for changing ourselves through education. Even if violence is a part of our broken and fallen human nature will it really have to always be so? Can we see ourselves as slowly lurching forward by a slow and agonizing process of evolution?
I will conclude here with the words of Jesus Christ: "Love one another."
It`s rather different here in restrained Canada. If anyone cries at a funeral, it is done only in the most tasteful way. A little silent sniffling, a couple of tears, or absolute granite silence and faces to match. No emotion, please, we are Canadian. If you are faced with a terminal illness and you do it stoically, then you are lauded for your courage. You are battling cancer. Never a victim. And what they don't tell you is how relieved everyone is that you`re not showing emotion, since most Canadians are absolutely inept at handling genuine expressions of grief and loss.
When I was a child anger was the only acceptable emotion in my family. No one cried. Tears were a sign of weakness. Being weak, or seen as weak, was the cardinal sin. My parents were raised during the great Depression and Second World War. No one had time for the luxury of emotion. Life was hard and weakness was not tolerated. Only small children and women were allowed to cry. In the case of boys the "weakness" was shamed and beaten out of them. You had to be strong, a fighter, not a wimp, not a sissy. Life was a jungle, a battlefield and only the strong survived.
This must be very similar to the kind of thinking that drove the Spaniards and the Aztecs during the conquest of Mexico. Both nations were proud military powers fighting (so they believed) for their very existence. Always fighting, always killing, always snuffing out the tears until they were finally too battle hardened to feel any emotion outside of anger, rage, hate and wrath. Did Spanish conquistadores cry while falling from their horses in battle and waited for the spear, sword or axe to finish the job? Did sacrificial victims weep and plead for their lives as they climbed their longest march ever up the steep temple stairs? Did they weep as they were forced to lay on the altar? As the knife did its work and they felt their beating heart torn out?
We have no way of knowing. I find it interesting that here in emotionally restrained Canada, if a spouse or family member shows little or no emotion over the murder of a loved one they are considered immediately under suspicion. But many people, here in Canada anyway, have been trained from the cradle to restrain their emotions. We are not allowed to openly express the hurt and grief we are feeling. The cool, unemotional reaction is otherwise seen as an indication of strength.
The cultures of earlier times were formed often in harsh and unforgiving conditions. Only the strong survived. Violence as the way of reckoning with the opposition was never questioned, almost always celebrated. People still wept as allowed but I think that a general staunching of tears before they can flow does something to also staunch our humanity. Tears invite empathy, which can be difficult. I have sometimes heard standup comedians (always men!) joke that crying men never elicit empathy in other men, only scorn and contempt. That is a learned behaviour.
We need to unlearn our fear of tears. God gave us, men and women and others, tear ducts for a reason. If we can accept crying as a necessary, often important catharsis, then so much the better. We shed tears in order to rebalance ourselves. And sometimes, some of us need to weep harder and longer than others, without shame. I think that this learning to accept as valid the full venting and expression of emotions of grief, fear and loss, can do much to help us to unlearn the ways of violence. I have long believed that violence is often the result of refusing to cry.
I remember still the much weeping that I experienced during the eighties and nineties while I was coping with the hundreds of deaths around me during my work with people with AIDS, my mother's death, and many others. This was a particularly dark chapter, I think, for many of us. Even if this prolonged agony of grief and much weeping contributed to my experience of trauma, in a way it also eased things, and I believe has helped make me into a more complete and more compassionate human being.
Many people believe that violence is an essential component of human nature. I suppose this could be true and, despite evidence to the contrary, I often would prefer to not believe this. Whether or not this is the case, I think that human beings have a particular advantage over other animals. We have an advanced capacity for changing ourselves through education. Even if violence is a part of our broken and fallen human nature will it really have to always be so? Can we see ourselves as slowly lurching forward by a slow and agonizing process of evolution?
I will conclude here with the words of Jesus Christ: "Love one another."
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