Marcos de la Sierra (a.k.a. El Donado)
The land lives within me
like a nest of nails.
I know what they want from me,
these hypocrites: to renounce
the world, the flesh,
all creatures,
all Indian thoughts.
I know
as much about God as they do,
possibly more: which is to say,
nothing. A night wind,
an obsidian mirror
that fogs with your dying breath.
No prayers, no ticking glass beads
can you take . . . even
the crucified Christ
gets left behind. Why linger
in the doorway, clinging
to the empty frame?
I was born with a caul–
singled out for service to Tlaloc,
rain-god & gourmand.
Cortez came just in time.
The friars say I was given to the church
through a misunderstanding:
it seems my parents were among
the first few thousand converts,
heeded the exhortation to plunder
their former idols.
It seems they were hoping
to save their own skins
from the pox.
Imitatio Cristi indeed–a lamb of God
ready for the spit
before I even reached the age of reason.
Now turned scapegoat, put out
to find forage in the desert.
Free to harangue
every whirlwind.
(To be continued.)
__________
El Donado – “The Donated One”: In the early years of the Conquest, Indian children were donated to – or kidnapped by – a religious order and raised as servants and oblates. Many among the idealistic first wave of Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits dreamed of creating a Christian utopia in the New World, and assumed that the Vatican would soon grant permission for full native admission to the priesthood and religious orders. This never happened. The sincerity of Native American Christians remained suspect for hundreds of years – and in fact is still distrusted by conservative Catholics for whom any hint of syncretism or deviation from Western European cultural norms is tantamount to heresy.
This Indian Marcos is an invented character who first appeared by name in Cibola 80, and was mentioned in a couple of the “Marcos” sections. I picture him as a non-Nahuatl native of what is now central Mexico, perhaps an Otomí.
A night wind, an obsidian mirror: Traditional pre-Christian images for the divine.
Tlaloc: God of the earth or underworld, which native Mesoamerican peoples picture as an all-devouring monster or serpent (but also as the main afterlife destination, the place we visit in dreams, and to some extent a mirror of the aboveground world).
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Cibola 1
- Cibola 2
- Cibola 3
- Cibola 4
- Cibola 5
- Cibola 6
- Cibola 7
- Cibola 8
- Cibola 9
- Cibola 10
- Cibola 11
- Cibola 12
- Cibola 13
- Cibola 14
- Cibola 15
- Cibola 16
- Cibola 17
- Cibola 18
- Cibola 19
- Cibola 20
- Cibola 21
- Cibola 22
- Cibola 23
- Cibola 24
- Cibola 25
- Cibola 26
- Cibola 27
- Cibola 28
- Cibola 29
- Cibola 30
- Cibola 31
- Cibola 32
- Cibola 33
- Cibola 34
- Cibola 35
- Cibola 36
- Cibola 37
- Cibola 112
- Cibola 38
- Cibola 40
- Cibola 41
- Cibola 42
- Cibola 43
- Cibola 44
- Cibola 45
- Cibola 46
- Cibola 47
- Cibola 48
- Cibola 49
- Cibola 50
- Cibola 51
- Cibola 52
- Cibola 53
- Cibola 54
- Cibola 55
- Cibola 56
- Cibola 57
- Cibola 58
- Cibola 59
- Cibola 60
- Cibola 61
- Cibola 62
- Cibola 63
- Cibola 64
- Cibola 65
- Cibola 66
- Cibola 67
- Cibola 68
- Cibola 69
- Cibola 70
- Cibola 71
- Cibola 72
- Cibola 73
- Cibola 74
- Cibola 75