In the Valley of the Little Turtles: The Death
that brings Life
Ayotzinapa
I.
Old Raymundo smiles and turns his look
towards the small hills surrounding the village, very close, indeed, to the
land where young normalistas learned
to improve the world. The elder shows
his toothless smile and stutters a little because of emotion. His eyes are still
lost on the horizon, they are invaded by a tear or two, but even he laughs as those
who remember the good times lost a long time ago, might laugh. Then, for the first time his eyes focus on me.
He points with his hand to an
unspecified location on the landscape. There,
he says, is where now comes a new flow of blood that will awaken people around
here. And then he goes again, backwards, lost in the hills as his mouth smiles
again and his eyes moistened again.
The old man has family in Ayotzinapa, but he
refuses to tell me who they are ... or who they were. Instead he repeats again
and again that the little ones will be the biggest: "They think they
killed them, but they don’t know their shell defends them from all evil"
... " the old masters came to teach us that life does not
die"..."the little ones will be the biggest"..."turtles
care for the land and protect it "," the little ones will ...
"and old Raymundo again recalls something very old that makes him smile
and again he gets lost in the cloudy horizon of Chilapa. Later I found out that the place he pointed
out to me with his hand was precisely the place of the school known as the Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, a house
that prepares the smallest of turtles, the most forgotten of all Mexico.
A dark man of about 45 years pass us on his
bike, and greets Raymundo, who is still sitting on an bench. I ask him to tell me what he remembered, and he
answers that when he was a boy his grandparents told him an old story. He smiles because he knows that history is
being fulfilled and he says again "the little ones will be the biggest".
I say goodbye to the old man and I promise
to come back the next day. I make my way
back to the village and ask about Ayotzinapa. People look down, people look away as if to
flee when hearing that word. As if the
mention of this name hurt their hearts. Nobody
says anything. The most daring, the young
people certainly, tell me about what they see in the news and conclude with
what is not in them: they were by killed the "pinche" government, they say.
The humid and mild air that characterizes
the region contrasts, that particular day, with the rainy and cool weather. Cold, even. It is as if nature would fit the mood of the
people of those lands: despite the warm hearts of men and women of Guerrero, a
gray and cold air shows in their eyes. And
so it goes in Chilapa: a cold air pours through its streets and makes them sad.
II.
I fulfill my promise and I go out in search
for the old Raymundo. He sits on the
same bench like yesterday. I greet him from afar but he does not recognize me. He is a little blind. We shake hands and accidentally I take longer
than usual in greeting him. The old man notices
and tells me, without shame, that his hands feel like turtle shells. And he laughs again. His smile is sweet and tender. The missing teeth make him look, for some
reason I still do not understand, wise, patient and honest.
- You're right, Don Ray, your hands are
like shells.
- So are all my people. Our hands are
shells. We have shells that care for us. We are like turtles and live to be very
old.
The old man is turning 97 years in December
and although his wrinkles and gray hair betray his age, his appearance is of someone
of 60 years. He is strong and stocky. And he is slow and patient ... like a
turtle.
I try to bring up the disappearance of the Normal students, which occurred a few
miles away, I try to talk about how the government and media have
depersonalized victims, how the government wants to make society believe that
the students were related to organized crime. I try to ask him if he also thinks they were assassinated,
but old Raymundo interrupted me at the right time.
- The turtles are wise, our ancestors loved
them much. Turtles are strong, no one
can harm them. They are spirits that always bring new life into their shells. They are protecting the earth.
- You
really like turtles, Don Raymundo?
- Yes. They recall me a story told to me by
my grandfather.
- What is the story about?
- It is about how the turtles will return
to help men of the future cleaning the earth to start a new family. The mother turtle will come to lay their eggs
and from the earth will come out new little turtles.
- And why did your grandparents tell you that
story, Don Ray?
He never told me more about that story. Instead, he confessed that as a child, many
years ago, he went to the beach near Acapulco and saw the small turtles getting
out of the sand and how he would frightened the birds so that they would not
eat the small animals seeking the sea. "And these turtles are back, near
here, only that the birds ate some, but there are still many."
A boy came to pick up the old man and I
could not ask more about his stories. Before
getting into the car, the boy (his grandson, perhaps) made a sign with his
hands: "The old man is a bit crazy", I understood. It might not be senility, perhaps he only tells
those stories because he feels lonely and needs attention and company, I
thought. I never imagined that the
painful news that has gone around the world would wake old memories for old
Raymundo, of "Ayotzinapan".
III
I kept asking people, hoping to get an
interesting story to do a report on the 43 students missing in Iguala,
ironically, "Cradle of Independence".
I left Chilapa discouraged for not finding
information and because I had to cancel my trip to Ayotzinapa on a late notice for
work reasons. In a last effort, I asked
a couple of men in a cafe about the history of the founding of Ayotzinapa.
Useless, they did not know even the history of the foundation of Chilapa.
However, the stories of the old Raymundo
are themselves a treasure that he (perhaps unknowingly) gave me. A puzzle that this wise old man gave me to solve
and put together. The final piece is a
beautiful metaphor, almost a prophecy. The lightning trip was worth it (and by
far).
IV. The valley of the sacred turtles
Ayotzinapan is already a sacred place. From these lands were born indestructible men
and women. At the image of the turtles’ shell. Protective
men were born there ... like the shells of turtles.
Just as the mother turtle lays eggs in the
warm sand of the beach, and future turtles wait in the dark and struggle to go
to sea, mother earth deposited in that small village children who had to cross
the sea to tell their stories of life, death ... and struggle.
Just as the turtles cross oceans and are
becoming wise during their trip, so are crossing the oceans the 43 abducted
students in Iguala, Guerrero. And on his
journey, the lives of "the little ones" are giving light and wisdom
to those who open their eyes to see their struggle and recognize themselves in
it.
At birth, the turtles have a long and
dangerous road to travel before reaching the sea: they have to go through the
beach and survive predators. Gulls and
other seabirds hunt them and devour them. Similarly, the vultures chased and tried to
devour "the old masters who came to teach us that life does not die" and
"the little ones", the poorest, the least known, the most humble. But they did not realize that their shells are
stronger.
For the peoples of Mesoamerica,
particularly for the Maya, Toltec and Aztec cultures, the turtle is a sacred
animal: she represents wisdom, strength, protection. She is a master. The turtle is Mother Earth, she is longevity, she
is the universe. The turtle is related
to the water and, as such, is able to dissolve up even a stone: she is toughness.
The turtle also belongs to the earth: she
deposits life there.
Sometimes the god Quetzalcoatl Ehécatl is
represented with the attributes of a turtle; in the murals of San Bartolo,
Petén, northern Guatemala, turtle shells appear; in Quiraguá contrails in
Guatemala, there are turtles; in Uxmal is "The House of the turtles";
some sculptures of Xiuhtecuhtli (Aztec god of fire) are recorded in their
shells. The turtle is also in the murals
of Bonampak: in the central room, on top at the top of the dome is a painted
turtle that brings on her back 13 stars that may amount to what is now known as
the Belt of Orion.
And the turtle appears also in the stories
that Don Raymundo’s grandparents told him. That old tanned, gray-haired man with his
toothless smile, who was born in Ayotzinapan, or the "Valley of the little
turtles".
And probably, to his grandparents, the
story was transmitted by their grandparents. In this small village, as Raymundo Don told
me, "the younger will help men of the future to clean earth to start a new
family."
And they are already achieving it: the
names, stories, pains, identity, faces, suffering and struggle of these 43
small turtles have crossed the seas. On
every continent the 43 students have become messengers. They are alive: their spirit is strong like a
turtle shell. Their life is an example
and teaching: the 43 young ones are already teachers. And the 43 will return multiplied to deposit
new life in this country.
The points are connecting and to my
surprise they form a beautiful poem of life (and struggle): Ayotzinapa,
according to some speakers of Nahuatl I consulted in the Federal District,
Guerrero and Veracruz, means "Valley of the turtles" or "Where
turtles approach the stream". Just
as the old man was told.
Turtles
Note:
According to the Nahuatl dictionary of the
Zongolica mountains, Veracruz:
Ayotl s .: TURTLE
Example: Ayotzin tlakua -.
The little turtle eats
Diminuative: -tzin, -tzih : seat-in-tzin –
little star (accompanied by -tli in most nouns: siwa-tzin-tli – little woman).
It is used without -tli on possessed nouns: no-kone tzin - my little boy. Also
has honorary, or reverential use.
Locative: -a-pan Example: Comalapan – a place
resembling a comal, small valley.
According to the Nahuatl dictionary of
Mecayapan and Tatahuicapan de Juárez municipalities, Veracruz:
Ayotzin s .: turtle
-tzin suf. dim. Indicates smallness or
affection, as do -ito suffixes and -ita in Spanish; Examples: piotzîn little
chick; ilamajtzîn little old lady.
Apan adv .: To the river, to the stream;
place over water or river.
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26 marzo 2015
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