Quetzal-Cortés

We thought you were the god you claimed to be

willing to share with us your mastery of the arts and crafts

in ways we had never known ourselves.

We thought you were Venus

an ethereal beauty

born anew from the sea.

We thought you were deserving

of the titles we gave you

as a patron, as a master of the wind and sky,

as an ally to our rain and a brother to our ancestors.

But you just so happened to have come here

when the true Precious Twin

was to make his return on the year of the Reed.

At the very beginning,

we made fools of ourselves by offering our hands,

only to have holes bitten through them

by your venomous weapons.

We had prepared a welcoming speech,

but quickly realized that your hissing laughter

was at our "primative" dress

and not for our friendliness.

You became our awaited Boundary-Maker

but divided us

by our abilities as servants

and the color of our skin

not by the earth and heavens.

You yourself were void

of the quetzal's feathers and coatl's scales

your shell-white frame indicating danger

like that of a dart frog's own vibrance.

You took our jewels that shown

as bright as your unforgiving emerald eyes

casting death with no resurrection upon our land.

You painted our fallen stone cities with our blood,

then turned back across the ocean

to tell of our own savagery

for "blasphemous" sacrifice.

Why would a deity of ours oppose his own faith

by bringing missonaries of an unfamiliar god to us?

Why would he take away our women

when he already lusts for his own blood?

Why would he force us to adorn his vessels

in our gold and torquoise,

but set us on fire instead?

Why would he use the light

of his own blessed morning star for such conquest,

considering it all civilized

in comparison to our ways of life?

As I,

the descendant of this unnecessary abuse,

look at your country's wealth and power to this day,

I now know of how these riches crossed the sea

after our homeland was constricted

in the jaws of a merciless snake of a different kind.