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The Indigenous Word in Mesoamerica Orality, Writing, and Contemporary Prose Donald Frischmann From Monk’s Mound to Cholula’s Tlachihualtepetl: The Story of a Cultural Voyage A long and fascinating road has led me to be a student of Mexican Indigenous literatures. I was born and lived the first twenty-two years of my life in a multiethnic neighborhood of European immigrants in Saint Louis, Missouri. In that part of the American Midwest, the harsh reality of most U.S. Native Americans was far removed. During my formative years, my image of ‘‘Indians’’ came from Western movies that my family and I saw on television or at the local movie house. In those predictable Hollywood productions , the Caucasians were the faithful bearers of ‘‘reason ’’ and ‘‘civilization’’ and therefore were always able to triumph over the ‘‘Indians,’’ whowere invariably portrayed as barbarian savages whose speech and behavior appeared ridiculous in comparison to that of thewhites. It would take me a few years still to discover that things were not really so. The present-day city of Saint Louis was founded by French explorers at the point of confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Those black, fertile bottomlands were first inhabited by agricultural societies over 1,000 years ago. Saint Louis was formerly known as Mound Citydue to the proliferation of ancient ceremonial mounds. By the mid-twentieth century there remained but one reminder of those times past: the imposing Monk’s Mound complex located on the opposite shore of the Mississippi in Cahokia, Illinois.1 My family, however, never went to visit that ancient oddity. Even as a state park, it remained minimally maintained (despite several scientific studies carried out there) until 1989, when the State of Illinois added an excellent interpretive museum to the site. I finally came to discover that wonder of the past during one day of curious wandering about in a friend’s car. By that time, the Cultural Revolution of 1968 had instilled in many of my contemporaries an appreciation for worldviews that differed fromWestern or Christian perspectives. For my friends and I, the latter no longer provided satisfactory responses to our existential questions. Our searching for new, substitute values led us to study not only the Far East but also the marginalized cultures of Native Americans in the United States, as nearby as they were distant. Thus, I became aware of place names such as Taos, New Mexico, which had become a Mecca for young pilgrims in their anxious search for alternative values. During the following two years my small world opened up enormously, and forever, as I took part in two high school cultural excursions to Mexico City. I was awestruck by that metropolis, the grandeur of Teotihuacán, and the cultural treasures in the National Museum of Anthropology and History. Although I still knew very little regarding contemporary Indigenous peoples, I had found another world that beckoned to me through its antiquityand the language of my maternal grandfather: español. My Spanish-language studies and independent readings on Mexico acquired greater importance for me than my other high school subjects; this was due in great measure to the boundless enthusiasm of a young teacher, James Wiswall , who remains a dear friend. Later, as an undergraduate university student majoring in Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics, the demands of my studies and after-school jobs prevented me from again venturing south of the Rio Grande. A few years later, following the advice of my mentor Dr. Enrique Noble, of the University of Missouri, I would enroll in the master’s program in Latin American Studies at the Universidad de las Américas (UDLA) in Cholula, Puebla; this was another decisive step in my development. While in my literature courses we studied the great Mexican mestizo writers, my anthropology courses led me to carry out fieldwork in the Nahuatl-speaking communities near the Popocatépetl volcano. A year later, I returned to my place of origin due to a prolonged labor dispute at 16 Donald Frischmann 17 the university; nevertheless, I would never lose my interest in exploring ancient Mesoamerican wisdom through the Indigenous word itself. Interestingly, I had already experienced a cultural journey that would continue to repeat itself until the present day: from the largest Indian mound in the United States to Mesoamerica’s largest preHispanic mound or pyramid, Cholula’s Tlachihualtepetl, ‘‘Hand-Made Mountain.’’ Both have left a strong and indelible imprint on my psyche, and they cyclically demand my...

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