Fire and Blood

from Richard Ostrofsky

of Second Thoughts Bookstore (now closed)
www.secthoughts.com
quill@travel-net.com

January, 2010

Several people have asked me what I like about Mexico – what it is that
keeps me coming back here, in six-month stretches, for the third time now.
I want to take this column to try to answer.
Let me dispose of the trivial up front: Mexico is considerably cheaper
than Canada, and between November and May it's a lot warmer. For a
senior on a pension those are two good reasons: Like so many Canadians
at my age, I've discovered my inner Snow Bird. But if that were all, there
might be even cheaper and balmier choices for those winter months: Cuba
say, or the Dominican Republic, though I have no first-hand knowledge of
either. What I can say is that Mexico has more to offer than warmth and
sunshine and a favorable exchange rate.
Remember that crack about Canada – that we are a country with too
much geography and not enough history? Almost the opposite is true of
Mexico: It's still a big and varied country, but history and anthropology are
the real reasons to come here. Two thousand years ago there was a
civilization that can be usefully compared with ancient Sumer and Egypt.
The Museo Anthropologico in Mexico City is a world-class museum
covering the numerous cultures that once flourished here, some of which
remain extant: Olmec, Toltec, Zapotec, Mayan, Mexica (aka Aztec) and
many more. Teotihuacan, in its time, was one of the largest cities in the
world. Palenque was one of the most sophisticated. The comparison
between New World and Old has a lot to teach about the causes and course
of the agricultural revolutions on both land masses – all the more because
they seem to have happened independently.
Especially considering their fragile ecological base and limited
technologies (with neither metal tools nor draught animals nor wheels) –
and still more so in comparison with the hunting-and-gathering cultures up
north – the indigenous civilizations of ancient Meso-America are worth
contemplating. Their gods were much crueler than those of the Old World;
they demanded human sacrifice on a large scale just to keep the rains
coming and the seasons turning properly. Like the Egyptians they built
pyramids and were magnificent scultors of stone; but in Egytian art there's
an incipient humanism that was quite absent here. In both regions, men
bowed down to semi-divine kings, and saw themselves as slaves of the
gods. But in the Old World they had kindlier and more predictable
masters.
Then the white men came. In most parts of the Americas, the native
populations and their cultures were crushed. In a few places – Costa Rica,
for example – they were obliterated. But in Mexico, probably because it
was already civilized, the native population could be enslaved, where
elsewhere it was more feasible to import blacks from Africa. Another
difference was that the Spaniards came with a heavy agenda of religious
conversion that was much weaker for the British. They saw the natives not
only as bodies to be used, but as souls to be saved. Also British
imperialism, much more than the Spanish, had strong elements of racism
everywhere it went. The Spaniards coveted native women, and often
married them. British colonists despised this practice and preferred to
bring their own. (The French, in these respects, seem to have been
somewhere in between.) The outcome in Mexico today, is a mestizo
population that mostly speaks Spanish, worships ardently in Catholic
churches, and follows a European and modern lifestyle to the extent that
income permits, but that looks more aboriginal than European, names its
banks and airlines and soccer teams after the Aztecs, and identifies more
with 'los chingados' than with the European and American chingones. The
modern society as a whole is still polarized along lines of chingación to a
considerable extent. (For further reading, look up the verb chingar at
www.urbandictionary.com, and Google a famous essay by Octavio Paz
called The Sons of La Malinche.
The role and current standing of Catholicism in Mexican history is
another fascinating topic. I am looking for, but have not yet found a
balanced treatment of this subject; but I am not holding my breath, for it
remains highly controversial. My impression is that modern Mexico (I
have little contact with the anti-modern part) is going through its own
version of a Quiet Revolution, as Quebec did fifty years ago, and is
becoming a post-Catholic society. At least from the time of the Ley Juárez
(Juárez's Law) in 1855, some Mexican governments have struggled to free
themselves from clerical influence while others have moved in the
opposite direction. The issue is still very much alive. Considering that
from the time of Cortés, the Church – with some conspicuous exceptions,
and some important ameliorating influence – has been more allied than not
with the oppressing chingones, the loyalty of modern Mexicans to Church
attendance and to its customs and general attitudes, if not always to its
doctrines and commandments, remains astonishing. From what I read, the
use of birth control methods is very much on the rise now, even in rural
areas; and women whose mothers had a dozen children are now having
only three or four.
I am currently reading a superb history of Mexico by T.R. Fehrenbach
with the title Fire and Blood (1973, 1995). That title is so apt that I have
cribbed it for this column. While history has in general been kind to
Canadians of European descent, living as we have under the wings of two
mostly clement empires, it has been notably cruel to Mexicans. No one
down here speaks nostalgically of Spain as "the Mother Country." Under
Spanish rule, exploitation of the colonies was brutal and rapacious, and
corruption became a way of life. Until recently, politics too was brutal and
often bloody. It is still more bitter and divisive than we Canadians are used
to, though much more stable now than formerly. (In my view, the current
drug wars have little to do with Mexican politics – or even with Mexico as
a whole. They result mostly from insane drug laws, policies and attitudes
in the United States.)
All in all, more than staid, aging and somewhat complacent Canada,
Mexico is a wonderful place to think about history and politics, and
observe the human animal doing its thing. Subject to constraints from the
rest of my life, I'm making a serious effort to get to know it.