History

I've been thinking about my ancestral history more and more these past few months. I've always wanted to learn about traditional Mexican medicine, but now that urge has gotten stronger, along with an interest in older, Indigenous medicine. Learning Nahuatl's become a reoccurring thought. Why has it been on my mind so much lately whether I look more Spanish or Indigenous? I've been thinking thoughts like, if the Aztec civilization had continued on its own path, as those of China and Japan have been able to do, what would it be like today? Today, I really felt, for the first time in a while, that almost helpless "It's not fair." Thinking in the context of all the world's history, the mass murder and death the Europeans inflicted, and continue to inflict, on the people of the "Americas" must be one of the most terrible things to ever occur.

And I am the embodiment of it.

Where is the happiness? Or rather, where does it come from? Because it is definitely still there, within me. My soul is here, as boundless as it was hundreds of years ago, as it is with all of us, even if my customs are tainted with colonizing impositions, inflicted over half of a century. Victor Villaseñor writes about the "power of any people who are put down: Yellow, Red, Black, White or Brown. They will rise up a thousand times more powerful, just like weeds breaking through the asphault. Nothing can stop the human spirit, especially when it's aware of its own power." Surely, this is true. People have overcome and provided for themselves in amazing ways. Sometimes, though, I can't see how it's enough. We have so much to do. Where is the strength to do that going to come from?