AH EK LEMBA’S ORATION AT CEMPOALA, 1413
By the March of the year 1413, the World-Conqueror’s army was a thoroughly demoralized lot. The Maya had thought themselves invincible, and had suffered four defeats—
Huēcalpan (1409),
Ixtlacāmaxtitlān (1411), Quiyahuiztlān (1412), Ocoyōcān (1413)—in the course of as many years. There were whispers, mutters, glances askew. Ah Ek Lemba knew and had little he could do.
The Maya army spent the rainy season of 1413 in Cempoala. Later Isatian sources claim that the clans were about to desert for Tiho until their king, now an old man, gave a speech to the assembled clansmen: men, women, and children all. This Cempoala Oration (
Cempōhuallān huēhuēhtlahtōlli) survives in as many versions as there are chronicles. The following account comes from a seventeenth-century history.
You jaguar clans, you eagle lineages! But I do not stop there. For there are many among you who have not been jaguar knights, who will not be eagle knights.
You men and women! You archers who bleed out the foe from afar, you slingers who break in their skulls from afar, you spearmen and swordsmen and pikemen and scouts, and you women who make the tortilla that is our blood and flesh, you women who dress the men for war! You fathers and brothers and sons of the dead, you mothers and daughters and wives of the dead! I see your faces. I hear your voices. I honor your works.
It is custom, when kings and commanders utter words of recommendation and praise, to speak to the good and courageous men. But now I speak to the men and women among you, to those of you who mutter, “I am no great warrior,” those of you who go and say, “I will never amount to more than mud and earth.” I speak to all of you.
This army is an army of the dead. The men who fought in Cuba are dead and burnt, their ashes scattered in directions, their breaths gone twisting up. And you who stand before me, though living yet, live with the dead. The shades of your mothers and fathers march with you. They lodge in your dreams, reside in your memories.
You have eyes to see and ears to hear. And when you pay due reverence to your ancestors, you ask them, “What is the end to these wars, this profane shedding of blood so unlike what our grandfathers used to do? Is it in vain that you have died, honored fathers? In a dream that your deeds have been, honored mothers?”
I have eyes to see your grimacing faces, ears to hear your whispering words. Is it indeed in vain that they have died and you will die, in a dream that their deeds have been and yours will be?
Hear my words, warrior men, warrior women. And once you have heard, walk away if you will. I do not stop you.
Life is like a tapestry. The weft goes up and down, and down and up, and down again, and in such a way is the tapestry made. The Sun goes up and down, and down and up, and down again, and so is time allotted out; generations of men upon men and women upon women are born and give birth and die—are made and make and are ruined—are forged and forge and dissolve.
And nothing is woven without ups and downs. There is no day without the night. No life can exist without death, no death without life. In the uppermost heaven, God is in pairs.
And from the cycle of opposites and oppositions, something greater is made. From the weft’s ups and downs are the beautiful tapestries hung. From the days and nights that follow on, the endless count of days and years. And from the navel strings that hang and the bodies that burn, all the work of a human life. There is no sweetness that is not bitter, no bitterness that cannot be sweet.
And the world is like a river. Still a river, and it will rot. Without change, there is decay. Nothing can last, and nothing must last. There was a world where the Sun did not die. There was no night with its loathsome dark, and so the people rejoiced. Yet they did not understand until the sweltering heat scorched the world away.
Humans are the midwives of the world, the battering ram-pushers of the universe. You were born on this slippery earth—the gods have given you life—so that you may push forth the wheel of alternations, so that you may keep the world in flux. When life is ripe, you must pluck it away; when death is old, you must sweep it out. Bring life from death, and death from life.
It is not a coincidence that the greatest of deeds a person can do is to kill, if he is a man, and give birth, if she is a woman. To kill and renew is the fate of man.
I have said that I am Quetzalcōhuātl, who is the generative god of the morning star that guides the Sun to its daily round. But look at me. I wear the skins of my enemies. I am also Xīpe Totēc, who is the Lord of Flayed Men, in whose name men’s flesh is torn away. And look at my hands. I am deformed. I am also Xolotl, the twin of Quetzalcōhuātl, the god of deformities. I am Day and Night. I am Life and Death.
And I say that time is ripe, and the years have done their wheeling underneath the sun.
Did your friends die in vain, o men and women? Will you die in vain, o Maya and Nahua?
No. They have died and you will die for the greatest cause of all: killing the old world and giving birth to a new one.
You ask why we have been defeated—and yes, I admit, I have been defeated. I say that nothing old dies without struggle. If they did, how less valiant, how less meaningful our lives would be!
Yet we will prevail in the end, for the gods are on our side. It is the obsidian law of the sacrosanct gods that all that is old decay, and break away, and cede the ground for a newer thing. Try as he may, the aquiach cannot stop us: no more than the evening Sun can flee from the bowels of the earth, no more than the dry season can shoo away the rain-bearing clouds, no more than today can halt tomorrow’s arrival.
I have read that there once was an old man in Cholōllān, in his fifth twenty. And he would always say, “Death cannot touch me!” [This is followed by a series of puns on the names of the battlefields where the Maya were defeated: Huēcalpan, Ixtlacāmaxtitlān, Quiyahuiztlān, Ocoyōcān.]
Once, he was sleeping in a big house [huēyi calli]. The roof bricks fell down that night, but because he was poor and housed in a faraway corner, he was not killed. And he said, “See, this is proof that I have vanquished death.”
Another time, this man went to a fight against the Tlaxcaltecs to encourage the young men, but the Cholōltec army was annihilated by the forces of Camaxtli [auh īxtlātīlōqueh in yāōquīzqueh Cholōltēcah, īyāōquizcāhuān quimīxtlātih Camaxtli; Camaxtli was the patron god of Tlaxcallān]. The man was as craven as he was old. He fled as well as any Cholōltec can [another pun; choloa is “to flee” in Isatian], leaving his trainees to die. Back in his hovel, the people scorned his cowardice. But he said, “See, this is proof that I have vanquished death.”
Then again, there was rain [quiyauh] that became a thunderstorm, and he was not hit. The gods did not see him fit for Tlālocān [the Mesoamerican paradise for those killed by drowning or lighting]. And again he said, “See, this is proof that I have vanquished death.”
And when this old man was crippled and despised, and his sons had left him and his daughters forgotten him, and his neighbors took pity on him [īca tlaocoxqueh], he only laughed and said, “See, I do not care, because I have vanquished death.” And his good neighbors shook their heads and wept.
His neighbors came back the next day and found him dead.
Do you understand?
Cholōllān will die. I swear by it, as a god may swear. And we will destroy it, as the Suns were destroyed—we will ruin it as with jaguars and hurricanes, we will destroy it with water and fire. And in the blazing destruction of my city, the city of Quetzalcōhuātl, we will together create another world. It will be as when the Fourth Sun had grown old and was destroyed, and I went into the Land of the Dead and brought back the bones of men.
The days and years will henceforth be counted from the destruction of Cholōllān. And when you are old, and the children forget there ever was a different way to number their years, remember that it was you who brought the new count into being.
