Chicanonautica: Springtime with Xipe Totec, Xochiquetzal, and Xochipilli

by Ernest Hogan

It looks like we're into another early Summer here in Arizona, but Spring hangs on, keeps clawing back. Clouds blow in. Temperatures fall (but not too much). Palo Verde trees and sage bushes explode with yellow and purple blooms, painting the urban sprawl like a psychedelic poster. Not to mention those cactus flowers.

All while the other parts of the country brace for a major snowstorm . . .

In Arizona, it seems we can’t keep a good season of rebirth and resurrection down. You’d think someone made a sacrifice to Xipe Totec, the Corn God, who demands the sacrifice of human skin the way the leaves need to be husked off ears of corn. The Mexica believed that all flesh was the same, as are we all, plant, animal, human just variations on DNA. Life is all there is to eat. Vegetarians and cannibals are siblings under the detachable skin.

Xipe does tend to stand in for Jesus in this culture.

I had a dream in which I stepped on a flower and it rose up like a snake to attack me. Forgive me, Xochiquetzal, Goddess of the Flowering Earth and Creativity. We need you in these times. Thank you for all the flowers. I’ll watch my step in the future.

We should pay our respects to her brother Xochipilli, God of all kinds of Sex, Drugs, Rocking, and Rolling. Yup, it looks like the Mexica invented hippies. Jipis. “By the time we got to Tenochtitlán . . .”

It does seem to be him the Norteamericanos are evoking when they celebrate Cinco de Mayo. The Battle of Puebla is ignored, or not mentioned, swept under the carpet of modern life. What a lot of governments would like to do as they rekindle their taste for human sacrifice at taxpayer expense. 

Reminds me of a ritual I once witnessed in Mexico City–there was a man in full Aztec priest regalia and a drugged rattlesnake . . .

If it only I could find a bottle of Escorpion Negro . . .

Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction, uses the word Mexica out of respect, but delights in the fear Aztec strikes in the hearts of certain kinds of people. He is also teaching his “Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style” course as part of the Palabras del Pueblo writing workshop again online, the weekends of June 6-7 and 13-14. Only $100. Sponsorships available. Deadline is May 20. Sign up now!

Our unenchanted, Denver gardens

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Honeysuckles and marigolds box

Denver and eastern Colo. are no places for gardens like Michael Sedano's in Pasadena. Despite snowstorm pics in the news, Colorado's dry--alpine arid--though it doesn't take a village to do a garden right.

Gardening is god-like, our pretending to be dioses, remaking the jungle into an image of our choosing. My wife and I are lucky to have a home and the time to devote to a garden somewhat different from others.

A neverending, Aztec-adirondack design

Our knowledge about the Mexica gardens of the Anahuac Valley is incomplete. Tezcozinco was the name of the poet-prince Nezahualcoyotl's gardens; Chapultepec and Xochmilco were the Aztec's. The invading Spaniards described them as more wondrous than any in the world, though they didn't know about those in Asia.

Aquaponics, hydroponics were practiced by the indigenes with their milpas; and recycling and waste management were taken to an extreme in Tenochtítlan because of limited land available for the Aztecs to settle on. This part of the heritage would be good to recover, obviously. Today, my wife and I are hosting an Unenchanted Garden Party, and maybe raising a little money for battered women's shelters. Here's what visitors will see.

 
My wife Carmen's vegetable and flower garden out front contains: tomato plants, plum, catalpa, peach and apple trees, jalapeños, strawberry, roses, yarrow, honeysuckle, tulips, icy plants, catnip, cosmos, tiger lily, currants, lilacs, lamb's ear, climbing wild roses, and trumpet vine.

Succulent, nopal, yucca and blue fescue living together

My half is the desert-prairie: Evergreens, wildflowers like cosmos and Colo. sunflowers, succulents, hens-n-chicks, groundcovers, agastaches, marigolds, penstemons, sages, lavenders, and prairie, blue fescue and buffalo grasses, yuccas, mt. plants, and a dozen varieties of cactus.

The yard goes for water-saving, with prairie grass that needs little water or mowing, with the sod landscaped into rolling hills to keep water from reaching the street. Cactus, succulents and grasses are native varieties from Mexico, the SW or Colo. native. Where possible, terracing keeps water loss down, especially on my wife's half. Inverted, Spanish roof-tiles channel rain-gutter water away from the house.

Jalapeños/onions box

Organic fertilizer: We use a concentrated, seaweed emulsion, about every two weeks. Better than MiracleGro, cheaper and requiring less frequent applications. Here's our organic weed killer & ants-ridder: 1 gal. vinegar; 2 cups Epson salts; 1/4 Dawn dish soap [blue original]. It works in less than a day. Just a little squirt kills ALL plants, so we use a sprayer set to a stream setting.

Latest attempt at an Azteco bench

Except for three items, the wood furniture and other yard features are homemade, primarily from reused or salvaged cedar and redwood. The designs are based on Aztec or indigenous models or motifs, avoiding boxy, ninety degree angles, when possible.

Marigolds, four-o-clocks and wild cosmos box

For the front patio, we cut over 100 bricks to make the curved border, set each brick with 6" rebar and laid it on pea gravel, to avoid using concrete.

For those of you out of town, this completes your tour of our unenchanted gardens. If you're in Denver, drop by today between 11:00am and 3:00pm.

Drinks and eats and transplants and seeds are here. And lots of chatting about gardening in the desert-prairie.

the front deck, built with lockers underneath

RudyG and Carmen

waiting out front in the yard

Strawberry hutch

a selfie of some our goldfish, out back