Friday, August 13, 1521 marks 500 years since Tenochtitlan (now known as present-day Mexico City) was violently taken over by the Spanish. This Friday marks 500 years of resistance to the Spanish, colonization, and the ongoing colonial projects. Throughout five centuries the original peoples of this land have survived a brutal genocide that has included the erasure of our history and cultural identity.
But not all has been lost. We still remain and from all across the land, we are returning to our sacred fireplaces and reconnecting with each other.
Below are a series of events commemorating this date from different circles across the land as well as a statement from Tonatierra to our communities:
From Maestra Xochitezcatl Yaocihuatl of Chikawa Conroe Texas:
TRANSLATION: “Many dances and commemorations this week. On August 13, 1521, 500 years later, it deserves no less. From the academic historical approach, to the perspectives within the experiences in dance. In Mexico and outside of Mexico. All contribution is valid and enriches the subject. You have to listen to everything.”
From Red Abya Yala and Tonatierra:
On August 13, 2021, a set of autonomous events of historical correlation and cosmetric significance are set to be realized by the surviving Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Anáhuac whose traditional territories in the Northern hemisphere of the continent Abya Yala were the first to be subjected to the initial invasion of the colonizing forces of Christendom beginning on October 12, 1492.
The term Anáhuac refers to the heart of the Nahuatl Nations in cultural and geographic terms, and was also referenced by the Congress of Anáhuac, the first congress in Mexico that that declared independence the Spanish crown in 1813.
The date of August 13, 1521, marks the fall of the last defenses of the Gran Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, before the combined forces of the Spanish Empire under the command of Hernan Cortez along with his allies of other Indigenous Peoples who were in alignment at the time against the Mexica (Aztecs).
Beyond these historical correlations, the cosmetric significance of the date is synchronized by the annual celestial cyclical appearance of the “Cicitlaquiahuitl”, (“Rain of Stars”) also called the Perseid meteor shower which will peak this year in the predawn of August 13, 2021.
The annual appearance of the Cicitlaquiahuitl, in the form of a shower of meteors on Earth each August, also signals a time of cultural reaffirmation and regeneration for the Original Nations of Anahuac. This cosmetric context, which extends in continuity for 5114 years, marks a beginning point in our Creation Story as beings of life, life on earth, human beings of life on earth tied to Mother Earth and each other by the teachings of being People of the Corn.
On August 13, 2021, we call upon all the surviving Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Anahuac to collectively reaffirm to each other and the World at large of Cemanahuac the following principles of legacy and commitment:
- As Indigenous Peoples of Anahuac, we are not conquered peoples. We reject, refute, and challenge the Master’s Narrative that the claims that the colonizing invasion of the Spanish Conquistadors into our territories is anything more that simply that: an illegal invasion that continues until today in with multinational corporate armor and international trade agreements. Against this invasion of 500 years, we continue to resist, rebel, and reassert our right of Self Determination as Indigenous Peoples, equal to all other peoples.
- We repudiate, denounce, defy the violent imposition of the nefarious “Doctrine of Discovery of Christendom (1492)” via the Papal Bulls Inter Caetera (1493), et al as the legaloid basis which the Mexican state claims in order to usurp and violate our territories without moral or legal justification, embodied in the concept of Original Property of the Nation which was instituted nationally with the Constitution of Mexico in 1917;
- We continue to stand in historical solidarity collectively recalling and reaffirming that the limits of our ancestral territories as Indigenous Peoples and Confederations of Indigenous Nations of Anáhuac are not prescribed under any colonizing or legaloid concept such as the Doctrine of the Discovery of Christendom, nor the international borders imposed with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848);
- We proclaim the date of August 13, 2021 as the date of a definitive resolution and in the spirit of Self Determination as Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Anáhuac, we will take the necessary actions to realize justice for our Indigenous Peoples, with the purpose of not allowing the passing of yet another 500 more years of the destruction of our Sacred Mother Earth.
Original Nations
in defense of the
Territorial Integrity of Mother Earth
