October 12th nightmare. By: Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas.
Wednesday October 12 was the macabre day when explorers at the orders of the bloody European courts "discovered" our Ixachillan or Nxihmoi continent, later improperly renamed America by the Europeans. Sick and twisted bad deeds were done by the invaders against our people. Yet the biggest concern nowadays is that we remember this black date as a good event, as if we have recieved something positive or beneficial. But our indigenous ancestors witnessed how our languages, our books, our historical memory, and the orderly way of living were destroyed; followed by suffering and exploitation (which still continues).
It is sad that we, as descendants of the Viejos Abuelos, oberve October 12th with eurocentric eyes, when we have the urgent necesity to highlight the cultural and human holocaust that systematically took place by these explorers and their successors. Monstruous genocides were lived during colonization, that in comparison dwarf actions of Adolf Hitler, Caligula, Pinochet, and more characters whose brutality is already a historical fact. Not being recognized the same way with the pandora box opened by La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa Maria.
Discovery of America?
Old World and New World?
Cristopher Columbus did not discovered this continent, because Vikings came before him (never in war). And still, millenia ago our indigenous ancestors entered to populated this lands, concluding that we ourselves are the real discoverers of Ixachillan continent. Eventhough the European did not discovered us: Where we lost?
For us, the Old World should be our continent, since it is the one we have lived in for uncountable millenia; and the new one would be in our case Europe. The fact of naming this land as New World denotes ignorance, in many cases due to the lack of information. Unless we are Europeans, Ixachillan continent is our proud Old World; the place where it flourished the great nations that left us their culture, and the eagle (cuauhtli), the serpent (coatl), and the jaguar (ocelotl) where elevated.
The name of America is proof that the cultural colonization imposed over us still continues. And in honor of our ancestors, the Viejos Abuelos, we have to break the chains and retake our historical memory. We used to call this continent Ixachillan in nahuatlatolli (nahuatl language), and in the midst of antiquity's fog we called it Nxihmhöi in Hñahñü (Otomí.)
October 12th undressed us from our ancestor's heirloom, distorted history, stomped our traditions, and implemented the decadent Western system. Let us remember this day for remembrance of what we once were, to be able to know where to go.
Published at El Diario de Nuevo Laredo Newspaper. Translated from Spanish.
