Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Return of Quetzalcoatl: Chapter 8

All chapters of this book have been moved: here.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Chechar, you asked what I thought of this post in our other thread. It's a bit long! You need to edit it, I think.

The main point is fine. You had posted the clip from Mel Gibson's movie before. It's well done.

Have you seen 'The Black Robe'? It's a Canadian movie about the Jesuits and their interactions with the Natives. Not sugar coated at all!

Of course Whites want their fantasy of the noble savage, being too often detached from nature themselves and from spirituality. It is easier to think they will find what they are looking outside themselves so they lose themselves in movies like Avatar or Dances With Wolves.

Civilization can come at a high price.

Chechar said...

Yes: it’s long for a blog entry. But my original intention was publishing it on paper. As I wrote in the epilogue that would have been published at GoV hadn’t I been kicked out because of the JQ:

“Like Dr. Morbius of Forbidden Planet I must confess I had a premonition about the coming catastrophe. Perhaps it is too late to start looking for a Spanish publisher: it takes time to find one and still more time to see if it will ever be translated into English. I decided therefore that the manuscript should stay at the monastery of Lindisfarne. If there is indeed a political, social or economic crash in the future that might start to reverse the current paradigm, the survivors might find someday at the monastery’s library a dusty, marginal and far-fetched psychological model to figure out where could the monsters that destroyed this civilization have come from.”

Chechar said...

The following is an Amazon book-review of Bernal Diaz’s book:

“I heartily recommend this book to both history buffs and lovers of literature alike. Not only did it give me an understanding of Hernan Cortes and his expedition that I never before possessed, but it was also a pure joy to read. It is one thing to be able to read facts out of a history textbook; it is another to be able to truly ‘feel’ what something was like. And despite the considerable length of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.

In fact, it reads less like a history lesson and more like a captivating work of fiction. Diaz’ work is rich, colorful, and without pretension. The language is eloquent and refined without being too wordy, and is absolutely beautiful; in fact, the last time I read language so delicious was while reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote. And there is plenty action, and excitement, and plot twists, and conspiracies, and more human sacrifice than you might have ever expected.

And, to be truthful, as politically incorrect as this may sound, a lot of notions I had were dispelled after reading this book. I no longer see Cortes as the ruthless, black-hearted conquistador that I once thought him to be; I now have a great respect for his courage, sagacity, and his great skill as a leader of men. Likewise, my belief that the Aztecs were merely some peaceful, Earth-hugging, ‘native’ victims of European conquest has also died.

And as unpopular as both of these sentiments might seem, I will stand by them, and I would say that it would do a lot of college students and liberal professors—those who are so outspoken in their hate of tyrants and fervid in their support of the oppressed—some good to read Senor Diaz’ tale. And I, having once been one of those ‘liberally-minded’ individuals never thought I’d hear myself saying these things, but I am.


There are two sides to every story. And though it is much easier to simply censure and villainize someone and label other people as victims—to make things black and white—I believe it is the job of a free-thinker to see all things as they truly are, from all sides, though I know that usually makes most people very uncomfortable.

Anyhow, do yourself a favor and get this book now. I only wish that there were another just like it.”

For those who might be considering reading Bernal Díaz, there’s a new edition of his book. I believe that something similar could be said about the other cultures that Europeans conquered. But the current self-hating ethos in the universities obfuscates the issues.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting, Chechar. My interest in the Anasazi culture and the disappearance of that people around the 12th or 13th century of our time in Arizona and New Mexico, has turned up some anthropologist sources who write that the Anasazi culture was destroyed by incursions of toltec cannibals from central Mexico.

Check this out:
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news128.htm

This kind of research has (naturally) been demeaned by several indian tribes, leftist academe and all of the new age fools, who need to worship at the altar of some "noble" primitives.

Chechar said...

Hi TC,

I remember having watched a TV program some years ago, I think about the Anasazi. In the program contemporary Amerindians were in denial about an investigator evidence of cannibalism. It was not until the researchers discovered and analyzed old human fecal material from the Anasazi (or a tribe related to them) that the evidence was proven conclusive.

Here in Mexico the nationalist anthropologists (i.e., virtually all of them) cannot deny cannibalism. They simply cheat the young Mexicans by don’t mentioning it in the school textbooks.

But the point of chapter 8, and of some of the next chapters, is that Avatar and the New Age idealization of natives is an absolute monstrosity. I mean: a moral monstrosity. You are not supposed to retrospectively pity the victims of Amerindian sacrifices even if they were Indian children!

Such is the level of cultural psychosis that Franz Boas and his epigoni has led us. To my mind, the cultural relativist is the devil himself...