domingo, diciembre 18, 2005

Difference between sacrifice and execution

Europeans and main stream historians always talk about our alleged sacrifices whenever they refer to any of our Precuauhtemic nations or cultures.

But why no one else in main stream history say anything about how Egyptians, Greeks, Celtics, and Romans performed sacrifices. Those were literally sacrifices to their gods and even demons they worshipped accordingly. The word "sacrifice" comes from the New World, Europe. Here, in our own Old World, any execution recorded by our Precuauhtemic historians is interpreted by modern archaeologists as a "bloody sacrifice to the multiple gods".

Of course rulers had to perform executions of their enemies, captures soldiers or dangerous criminals. For instance, the Mayans had the famous Ax performance, which glyphically means an execution of an enemy or invading lord. Siyaj K'ak', general of the Teotihuacan army that invaded Mutal (today Tikal, Guatemala) executed the high ranking Mayan lords and rulers. In written history within the Mayans it is registered not only as an "entrada", but also with ax acts. But when Americans or Mexicans try to explain it, they talk about it as a sacrifice, instead of execution or pure revenge.

Another huge problem we have is that whenever a burial in Teotihuacan, the Hill of the Jaguar (Monte Alban, Oaxaca), or Tenochtitlan, it is described as a "burial of corpses which were sacrificed to the gods". How do they know they were sacrificed? What if that important person died in battle and was buried with honors under the pyramid? Why do they always assume we were sacrificing people all day long to the "numerous gods"?

One last example. When 8-Deer Nacuaa, high ruler of the Mixtecas, was killed by his enemy 4-Wind, it is mentioned in main stream history that it was, guess what, a sacrifice. Now, if someone would kill both your parents and your brother, and after that conquer you city, wouldn't you want to kill that person plain and simple? Or would you undergo into an ellaborate ceremonial of sacrifice to the "gods"? Come one! People at all times, at all places have the same human impulses. 4-Wind killed 8-Deer in revange of the killing of her mother, 6-Monkey Nunuu, and maybe also to seize power. After all, 4-Wind was the only survivor of the Yucu Añute family lineage. So 4-Wind killed 8-Deer instead of sacrificing him, you can even say it was an execution as it happened when Mexicans executed the Alamo survivors. So president Santa Anna never "sacrificed" Texans, and 4-Wind did, just because Santa Anna was white and 8-Deer was a Mixteco?

I do not justify sacrifices because they were non existent. The word was misused according to the Christian-minded gold-thirsty Spaniards. They were executions. You must fist analyze the words. After all, has anybody ever witnessed a sacrifice in Precuauhtemic times? How can researchers, Anthropologists and Mexican intellectuals base their thinking in weak and unsubtantiated Spaniard's reports? Now what's the logic behind that?

The only ones that were doing complicated sacrifices to their gods were the Europeans. Can you imagine killing your daughter only to get winds for your ships to cross across the sea and invade Troy? Well the "glorious inventors of democracy and Western civilization" did. Maybe Europeans should focus in their own history instead of staining our own.

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