• History of the World

  Filed under Blog Notes
  Apr 20

  I’ve only heard this story once, but around here one telling from a completely unverified source qualifies as history. In this case the teller was Sergio Alvarez, celebrity guide, chaufer, moving man and all around useful guy to know. He also happens to be Mexican, which gives the yarn some added veritas. I can’t tell you the fountains of bullshit that winter visitors have spouted at me, quoting with pride “a Local” they met the night before at El BarCo, as though qualifying for status as a local around here required some kind of pedigree beyond an old plane ticket, for Pete’s sake. Don’t get me started on the internet, which gives unfounded rumor an entirely new level of authority, as I know better than anyone. I’m kind of casual about research, frankly, so if it shows up in Wikipedia or Ask Jeeves, well, that’s better than me just making it up during a nap, right?

  Based on all that, an anecdote from Sergio is practically the same as reading it in one of the lost codices. He says that the first settlers in Lake Chapala were the Nahuatl who were looking for the place that their Gods had picked out for them on which to build a fabulous city. It’s not surprising that the this rough bunch of nomads, who eventually became the Great Mexica, had a hard time finding the place they were looking for. For one thing, they were searching for a fairly specific and unlikely image that had been prophesied for them, that of an eagle eating a snake, on top of a cactus, yet. That is not a vision that they were likely to stumble over very often, no matter how much peyote they swallowed.

  In addition to the difficulties presented in locating the snake eating eagle, the Mexica made unpopular house guests, being a hideously arrogant and unpleasant people with tendencies toward cannibalism and necrophilia. When the well mannered local folk who had first dibs on the land saw them coming, they zipped up the tent flaps pretty quickly. Their bad manners and rude ways caused their welcome to wear very thin with any of the tribes that inhabited the choice spots they came across while searching for the vision. The Azteca had not yet developed the habit of sacrificing anyone who looked at them sideways, so they just moved on when asked.
  Their journey started somewhere around Arizona and ended, as you know, 176 years later in the spot that is now Mexico City. What you may not know is that there’s a school of thought that holds that the reason they eventually chose the middle of a lake surrounded by swampy marshes to build Mexico City was not because they finally saw the dumb vision, but because they had been kicked out of every other place between Nevada and Ecuador, and that one spot was the only place in all of the known world that nobody else wanted. What could you do with it? Build a floating garden, hahaha? An Aztec warrior of the time, burned out on looking for the prophecy, might have been heard to say “I got no place else to go!” Like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman.

  According to Sergio, about half of the tribe had already given up on the mission fifty years earlier on the Nayarit to Tenochitlan leg, which took them along the South Side of our own Lake Chapala,( where San Luis Soyatlan is today.) Once there, a group of warriors looked around and saw that the Lake was beautiful, the climate perfect, that bougainvillea and corn grew if you so much as held the thought in your mind. As if by magic, this particular group of warriors suddenly started insisting that they saw the eagle on top of the cactus eating a snake etched into the shadows on the side of our mountains here. “Where?” asked the medicine men and religious folk “We don’t see anything!” “What’re you, blind?” cried the warriors “There, that big shadow! Boy, if that’s not an eagle eating a snake on top of a cactus, I don’t know what is!” They stuck to their guns, and that’s how the shores of Lake Chapala got settled.

  Sergio says so.

  
  
  3 Comments

3 Responses to “History of the World”

1. 

   Schweig said on April 27th, 2010 at 1:02 am

   I remember clearly Sergio’s pointing out the exact spot on our trip to the other side of the lake! And Ican’t wait to begin my next Mexican vacation.

2. 

   Elliott said on April 27th, 2010 at 5:54 am

   Ha! Take that all you readers who think I make this stuff up! And Mommycita, we can’t wait for your Mexican Vacation to begin either.

3. 

   TW said on April 28th, 2010 at 4:11 am

   I’m at a loss for words. Sergio is telling us that what we read in history books isn’t true?

   Next someone is going to tell me that George Washington didn’t cut down a cherry tree – and tell the truth, or throw a silver dollar over the Potomac River.

   Hhhhrrrrmmmmpppphhhh!!!!!
   (Please substitute the indignant prude emoticon for me!)

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