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Saturday, August 01, 2015
Our Mother Who Art In Earth
Today in the towns of the Andes, Mother Earth, Pachamama, celebrates her big fiesta.
Her children sing and dance on this everlasting day, and they share with Mother Earth a mouthful of every corn delicacy, and a sip of each of the strong drinks that lubricate their joy.
At the end they ask for forgiveness for the harm the despoiled and poisoned earth has suffered, and they plead with her not to punish them with earthquakes, frosts, droughts, floods or other furies.
This is the oldest faith in the Americas.
Her is how the Tojolabal Mayas in Chiapas greet our Mother:
You offer us beans,
which are delicious
with hot peppers, with tortilla.
Corn you give us, and fine coffee.
Dear Mother,
take good care of us, do.
And may it never occur to us
to put you up for sale.
She does not live in heaven. She lives deep in the depths below ground, and there she awaits us: the earth that feeds us will feed on us in turn.
by Eduardo Galeano from Children of the Days
Bit of fast one by Galeano to follow the statement that "this is the oldest faith in the Americas" (as it probably will have been) by a clearly modern poem (for instance coffee wasn't introduced into the Americas till 1720). It is not bad but I wonder who composed it? Subcommandante Marcos?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that it would have been the "oldest faith in the Americas". It's obviously the "faith" of agriculturalists but were these the earliest inhabitants of the Americas? Or would they have been pastoralists? Or hunter-gatherers? Both of which would not have had this faith.
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