by Ernest Hogan
I consider the
Yaquis to be family. My grandfather was a Yaqui – well, actually he
was my mom's stepfather, but we didn't make those kind of
distinctions in our large, extended Chicano familia. Identity can be
such a bitch. So I'm a Chichimec, but the influence of that
Yaqui warrior on me is monumental.
I've always been
frustrated by how difficult it was to find information about the
Yaquis. In most accessible culture, the dubious books of
Carlos Castaneda dominate, but I'm been told by Yaquis I've met that
they're not accurate, and Castaneda's "New Age" activities later in life backed
that up. The Yaquis we bought my wife's wedding dress from in
Guadalupe, Arizona, were nice enough, but why were
they such badasses in the movie Two Mules for Sister Sara
(in which Clint Eastwood plays a guy named Hogan)? Hollywood thought Burt Reynolds and
Raquel Welch made believable Yaqui revolutionaries in 100
Rifles. And why were they
trying to overthrow the Mexican government in the old serial Zorro's
Fighting Legion?
Recently,
I ran across a documentary by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, creator of the
detective Hector Belacoarán Shayne, author of more fiction and
nonfiction than I can keep up with. The
Yaquis is part of Los
Nuestros, a series he's
doing for the Venezuelan network teleSUR. The missing Yaqui history is revealed.
The
Yaquis
tells the history that isn't told in Mexican classrooms: The story
of Mexico's longest armed struggle that is echoed in the
contemporary struggle for the waters of the Yaqui River, a struggle
that could wipe the people and the river out of existence.
It's a story that's happened before, and is still happening, all over
Aztlán. Ruins, ancient and modern, are usually found next to dead
rivers. Towns, peoples, civilizations can die. It's a problem that
will require very real politics, and more science than fiction to
solve.
Meanwhile, here's the documentary:
Ernest Hogan's novel Cortez on Jupiter, “introduced
the subgenre of Chicano SF to a startled, dazzled American audience,”
according to Publishers Weekly.
4 comments:
Yaquis in our family closet too. Badasses. Spaniards, then Mexico, enslaved them, shipped them off to Yucatan to work the hemp fields. They walked back, barefoot, starving. But they did. – RudyG
That and the Irish input explains me.
My Yaqui antepasados were slaves of Junipero Serra's Watsonville sucursal to the Carmel Mission.
The Yaquis are invisible, and everywhere.
Post a Comment