Quiahuiztlán, Cempoala, & Antigua

Today we went to several historical sites, not only of interest concerning Mexico, but for all of the Americas in general. Our first stop was Quiahuiztlán, which is a sacred site of the Totonac people, who were overtaken by the Aztec in the mid-1400s (several decades before Spanish conquistadores came on the scene). Interestingly, the Totonac actually helped Cortés defeat the Aztec because the groups were enemies. But I digress, back to the story of Quiahuiztlán.

Quiahuiztlán is a place where the Totonac buried the remains of their elite rulers. I didn’t take any pictures of these burial sites out of respect for those interred there (only priests and other high officials were even allowed to go up into this area).  Still, I walked too close to the remains of a burial tomb and tripped on the corner of it. My Dwayne Wade converse were scratched, but that’s what you get trying to walk too close to burial sites.

The mountain which stood above this area was the place where Totonac priests preached from (their voices carried down to the people below). The mountain top also served as a lookout point and supposedly the call was given out in 1519 when ten Spanish ships headed by Hernando Cortés were spotted off of the coastline.

Our next stop was Cempoala, a Totonac training group for warriors. There were a number of monuments and pyramids there, including a training circle where I valiantly fought my friend Dulce and defended my honor.
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Hernando Cortés didn’t set up shop in Quiahuiztlán or Cempoala (I don’t think he bothered too much with Cempoala because it wasn’t really in use by the sixteenth century). Instead, Cortés moved to the first Veracruz, what is now called Antigua. Here, the first Christian church was built on the mainland of the Americas. We got to see this church and the house of Cortés. They were right next to each other and I had mixed feelings about both of them. I mean, when thinking about Cortés’ motivation for coming to the Americas, it's clear that little of it had to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ. And most, if not all, of the buildings we see on these trips were built with the hands of forced labor.

After Cortés had left the area, the indigenous inhabitants were going to tear down Cortés’ house, but amazingly a huge tree had grown there with it’s rooted woven throughout the walls, which kept some of them standing. The people there read this as a sign and understood the tree as being sacred. Instead over tearing down the house of Cortés, they left it standing.

The people were right, this place is definitely both sacred and symbolic.

As we walked across a small bridge, where we could see down the river Cortés sailed down and docked his ships roughly 500 years ago, I was down-heartened. I’m good at dealing with tough stuff through laughter and joking, and that’s what I do most of the time on this trip. A lot of this stuff is heavy. You walk around, take a picture of a historic site where a thousand, ten-thousand, or perhaps more people died... and then you move on.

How does any of this connect today? What do we learn by making those connections? Who do we blame for these atrocities? What will blame help accomplish anyway? And how do we deal with our blended heritage that comes from the three corners of the globe? A bigger blog would be needed to answer all this.