Statue of an Cuauhpilli, meaning Eagle Warrior in Nahuatl, stands at attention at Mexico’s National Musuem of Anthropology in Mexico City.
Found at the Huey Teocalli, commonly known as El Templo Mayor, a large temple complex adjacent to the city’s present day Zócalo (Plaza de la Constitución).
The Eagle Warrior and the Jaguar Warrior were the Mexica’s two most specialized warrior societies, or military orders. As seen on many of Mexico’s national soccer team apparel, the Eagle Warrior symbol remains popular amongst Mexicans of all ages and stripes.
This statue is part of the Sala Mexica or Mexica Hall, a permenant exhibition at the museum.
La academia de Lengua y Cultura Náhuatl, del Instituto de Educación Media Superior, te invita a la gran celebración que se llevará a cabo el 25 de noviembre. Más información.
No es noticia de última hora. La inmediatez, no tiene nada que ver con el objetivo de señalar el abuso de autoridad que nuevamente ejerce el gobierno mexicano en contra de sus ciudadanos por expresar su opinión — de cualquier tipo — en Twitter.
Hace unas semanas las víctimas del evidente autoritarismo del gobierno mexicano fueron dos usuarios veracruzanos de Twitter: el gobernador de ese estado, Javier Duarte, los acusó publicamente en su cuenta de twitter de “terrorismo”, los encarceló por más de 20 días y además promovió una ley anti-constitucional para perseguir “rumores” en Twitter.
El legado de Duarte, no tardó en producir más desastrosos efectos en México.
Este fin de semana, en el marco del segundo accidente áereo que sufre un segundo Secretario de Gobernación durante la administración de Felipe Calderón, nuevamente se ha producido un sospechosismo en la población mexicana, debido a que éste evento sucedió de la misma forma que el accidente de Mouriño hace 3 años (un accidente aéreo) y esta vez además, se detuvó a una persona por sus comentarios sarcásticos en Twitter.
A pesar de que las condiciones climáticas se mencionan oficialmente como causa del accidente, la nubosidad que impera en el sistema de justicia mexicano y el gobierno en general, degeneró una vez más en el abuso de la ley.
Esta vez la víctima de un sistema incapaz de discernir entre una broma y una advertencia degeneró en la detención —sin orden de aprehensión y con lujo de violencia — del ciudadano Mario Flores (@mareoflores) quien, como muchos ciudadanos conscientes del extraordinario accidente también sucedido hace 3 años en el mes de noviembre, hicieron comentarios en Twitter en vísperas de la fecha geek del 11/11/11.
On October 19, 2001, leading human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa was found shot to death in her Mexico City office. Despite mounting evidence, including several death threats and previous attempts on her life, Mexico City prosecutors declared her death a suicide.
Ochoa, a former nun, was representing campesino ecologists from the state of Guerrero at the time of her death. In a previous case, she represented Zapatistas from the EZLN, winning their acquittal. Her primary work was that of a defense attorney at PRODH (Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez).
Family, friends, and former colleagues of Digna gathered today to declare her death unsolved, saying they intend to take her case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.
“Presumed Guilty” (“Presunto Culpable”) is the story of Toño Zúñiga, a computer vendor from the Iztapalapa section of Mexico City, who was wrongly accused and convicted of murder in December 2005. On Monday, it won the award for Best Investigative Journalism at the 31st Annual News & Documentary Emmy ceremony in New York City.
The film’s director, Roberto Hernández, took the opportunity at the ceremony to dedicate his award to Troy Davis, noting that unlike the United States, Mexico has no death penalty.
“That’s why we were able to save Toño,” Hernández says, “and why Troy Davis is not longer here.”
“Presumed Guilty” first aired in the United States on PBS in July 2010. An extended cinema version premiered this past February to mass acclaim. In March, a federal judge suspended its exhibition due to a complaint from a witness shown in the documentary. The film re-premiered after its distributor complied with an order to conceal the witness’ identity.
Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. In December 2005 this happened to Toño Zúñiga in Mexico City and, like thousands of other innocent people, he was wrongfully imprisoned. The award-winning Presumed Guilty is the story of two young lawyers and their struggle to free Zúñiga.
Teenage boys shuffle into a cramped room. Wearing the same navy blue sweatpants and white undershirts, they sit cross-legged on yoga mats laid out on the floor. Thick scars on forearms and biceps are apparent as they stretch their hands to their knees and shut their eyes.
Yoga instructor – and ex-convict – Fredy Díaz Arista begins guiding a meditation aimed at relaxing the group of 10 young offenders. Among them and their peers, about 300 youth in this Mexico City jail, the crimes range from drug abuse to robbery, assault, and murder.
“The quake, which struck on Mexico’s Pacific coast, exposed a crippling ineptitude in the response of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The government seemed unprepared and unable to organize itself to respond to the quake, so ordinary people did it themselves.”
Coatlicue was the Earth, the mother of Coyolxauhqui, the Moon, and of Centzon Huiznahua, the “Four Hundred of the South” and another name for the Stars. One day, while she was sweeping her temple on top of Coatepec hill, the Earth was miraculously impregnated thanks to a little ball of feathers that floated down from the sky and that she tucked away next to her bosom. The Moon viewed the pregnancy of her mother as an affront and she instigated her brothers, the, Stars to kill her. Huitzilopochtli, the Sun, from her womb, warned the Earth of the danger and decided to defend his life and that of his mother. When the Moon and the Stars were on the point of killing her, the sun Huitzilopochtli was born, fully armed for war with a fire serpent called xiuhcoatl,with which he decapitated his treacherous sister, to then cast her down from the top of Coatepec hill. In her fall, the goddess was dismembered with each turn.
So the Moon dies every month, defeated by the Sun and cut in pieces. Coyolxauhqui and her dismemberment are the explanation for a celestial phenomenon, in which the moon dies and is born in phases, and so she was found at the foot of the stairway of the Huitzilopochtli temple at the Templo Mayor.
The relief shows the goddess decapitated, arms and legs dismembered, drops of blood oozing from her extremities and with the joints of her bones exposed. She is adorned with a two-headed serpent belt bearing a skull seen on her back. The two-headed serpent is repeated on the ties of her thighs and arms. The articulations and talons on her feet are adorned with masks composed of a profile face bearing fangs, the significance of which is still open to considerable conjecture. She wears her characteristic sandals, wristlets and anklets. Her torso, with flaccid breasts, is shown frontally, while her hips are given an unusual twist to be shown in profile along with her extremities. Her head displays a great feather headdress and her hair is adorned with circles. Composed of three geometric figures, her ear ornaments frame her face, which bears the most diagnostic element of her adornment: bells on her cheek, which is also the name of the Moon goddess. Finally, what appears to be her last breath issues from her half-open mouth.
The sculpture has a 3.25-meter average diameter. Weighing 8 tons, it is made of volcanic stone. It was found accidentally by Electricity Company workers who were installing underground cables at the corner of the streets of Guatemala and Argentina on February 21, 1978. This important discovery resulted in the archaeological excavations of the Templo Mayor Project, which until today continues under the direction of archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma.
Coatlicue, which is Nahuatl for ”the one with the skirt of serpents,” is also known as “Mother Goddess of the Earth who gives birth to all celestial things,” ”Goddess of Fire and Fertility,” Goddess of Life, Death and Rebirth,” and ”Mother of the Southern Stars.”
This sculpture of Coatlicue was discovered in what is today the Zócalo of Mexico City on August 13, 1790. Soon after, Mexicans began adorning her with flowers and bringing her offerings. The Spanish, who condemned her as satanic, buried her in the patio of the University of Mexico, where she remained for 33 years.
She represents our matrilineal heritage, and the feminine duality that characterized our spiritual views. She, as is the Mexican woman today, is beautiful, dignified, and resilient.
