The Legend of Ita Neñe
Reclining against the high back of the royal throne, made of the finest black marble and covered with the tanned skins of animals felled by the arrows of the bravest hunters, Tiger Claw, the Lord of Achiutla, found himself enveloped in the deepest depression. His proud head lay bowed under the weight of sinister thoughts. An irrepressible spasm of horror shook his body as he remembered the prediction that the High Priest had pronounced after bitterly reprimanding his behavior.
You are the father that guides the people. For this reason your sin is even more reprehensible. Now the maiden Star of the Dawn must die, sacrificed by your own hands. But her death will not placate the anger of the gods offended by your impious sacrilege. The Sun God has revealed to me in a dream that from the blood of Star of the Dawn will be born the instrument of His revenge, which will cause the ruin of your empire.
After the sacrifice of Star of the Dawn, never again did peace return to the spirit of the once proud and awe-inspiring lord of Achiutla. In his dark and sleepless nights, those desperately long nights, a succession of visions, like a procession of ghosts escaping from the depths of his own terror and guilt, swirled about him, floating before his eyes in a misty, blood-soaked haze.
The vision of that awful moment presented itself to his mind-that moment when, under the influence of a dark desire, an agonizing obsession of impure love repressed for so long that it roared in his loins like the cry of a beast in heat, he had desecrated the purity of Star of the Dawn, the vestal virgin of the Sun God, Ia Nicandi, at the very foot of the deity's sacred alter.
And then, horrified, he would observe another vision emerge from the previous one. It was the moment that his own hands, clutching the sharp obsidian blade, had ripped through the beautiful body he had dishonored and then abandoned in the woods, still throbbing, to become food for the birds of prey and the wild beasts.
And he remembered how the blood of that body, falling drop by drop like liquid rubies, had been carefully collected in a jade urn; and by order of the High Priest, buried in the very gardens of the Sun God's sanctuary. And how in the exact place where the urn had been buried, the exotic ita neñe, the flower of blood, red like exposed viscera and covered with sharp, thorny leaves that cut the flesh, had sprouted-a symbol of the cruel sacrifice of that profaned virgin.
And then one night like so many others in which he had barely attained a tenuous kind of sleep tied to the torture of the most sinister and extravagant nightmares, he was assaulted by aterrible dream that filled him with anguish. Tiger Claw, who had always felt an instinctive terror towards that strange ita neñe flower, found himself compelled by an irresistible force to approach it. The force pushed him closer and closer to that portentous flower and compelled him to extend his hands to touch it. As his hands touched the flower they pulled back instinctively with a violent jerk as though he had touched a flame. He stared dumbstruck at his hands stained with a viscous red liquid. Yes, the flower was actually bleeding. Tiger Claw woke up with a start and tormented by the anguish of that sinister dream, he ran to the light of a nearby torch to look at his hands. They were in fact covered in blood.
II
The wide halls of the sumptuous palace of Achiutla were unusually abuzz with the noise of an extraordinary event that had gathered together the most important lords of the realm. They were gathered in the vast hall of ministers. Now the dark face of terror had disappeared from the face of Tiger Claw as he reclined indolently on the royal throne and in its stead he bore an almost aggressive expression, an expression of serene majesty in anticipation of receiving the ambassadors of the great Aztec king Montezuma.
The ambassadorial retinue, presided over by the eminent Tlacatecall of the armies of Tenochtitlan broke through the stunned silence that encompassed the hall of ministers. Tlacatecall was not wearing the royal cloak of combat, but the elegant white cloak of an ambassador. After having deposited at the steps of the throne an extremely rich gift of gold earrings and fine cloth marvelously embroidered, his voice resounded solemnly, vibrantly and clearly with the imperious accent of the powerful:
"The powerful Lord of Anahuac, my king and master Montezuma, greets you through my person and sends you this present which you see at the foot of your throne to remind you of his great power. Montezuma knows that in your gardens there grows a flower called ita neñe, which is called izquixochitl, the flower that cuts, in our language, and he desires to posses it. If the present which you see here, as payment for the rare flower, does not satisfy you, put your own price on it."
A ray of anger appeared in the eyes of Tiger Claw upon being treated with such disdain. Then, almost simultaneously, that painful sensation of terror that tortured him every night followed. Unconsciously he related the demand of the Aztec with the terrible prophecy of the High Priest ". . . from the blood of Star of the Dawn will be born the instrument of His revenge which will cause the ruin of your empire."
He hesitated, oscillating between his anger and pride on the one hand and that deep sensation of terror that continuously oppressed him. But his hesitation did not last long. Over the violent combat that was going on inside him, he was finally able to impose his pride over the humiliating demand of the man from Tenochtitlan. Feeling clearly the blood in his veins boiling and blinded by an uncontrollable anger, his response came like the sound of a whip through the vast hall of ministers:
"The flowers of my garden have no price and it does not please me to sell them either by choice or by force. Pick up your trash and tell your Lord Montezuma that if his desire to posses the ita neñe is so great, let him come himself in person and take it away, if he can, because my power is in no way less than his."
Tiger Claw was silent. The precious gift of the Aztec king was taken away and in its place at the foot of the throne was placed a rich and fine huipilli, a womans shirt, a signal of offense and challenge.
Fifteen suns passed. At the dawn of the next sun the mountains that surrounded Achiutla were crowned with warriors from Tenochtitlan. It was a spectacle both magnificent and terrifying. The wind swayed the long and handsome feathers of the warriors. The platoon commanders took up their places and the ominous beating of the drum punctuated the expectations of those tragic moments with a lugubrious echo, an ominous foreboding.
Suddenly from the top of a nearby hill came the husky wail ofa conch shell and a swarm of warriors with deafening war cries descended in an impetuous avalanche down the sides of the mountains falling upon Achiutla with the fury and momentum of an overflowing river.
--War! War for Montezuma!
The war cry of the Aztecs dominated the din of battle. And mixed with the mortal whoosh of flying arrows came the dry pounding of the war drums. The mixed blood of Mixtec and Aztec warriors began to flow in deep purple streams at the foot of the walls of the sacred city. It ran and ran all that day, soaking the dead bodies and splashing the faces of the warriors, mixing with their death throes and the harsh cries the soldiers used to hearten themselves in battle. It ran until almost the time when the sun was setting behind the ridge of the faraway mountain ranges. As though the sun's fall behind the distant horizon was the sign of sinking into defeat, Tiger Claw retreated, undone, making his last redoubt the sanctuary of the Sun God. Meanwhile the Aztec hosts howled savagely to proclaim their victory and threw themselves into sacking and executions in the streets of the defeated Achiutla.
The shadows of evening ended the terrible orgy of blood and highlighted against a dark background the tragic vision of the sacred city enveloped in flames. By the light of these fires and in the very place of the sanctuary garden where the ita neñe flower had just been picked, horror itself presented its sinister face in a macabre spectacle: On the end of Tlacatecall's lance, with its eyes enormously wide and expression fixed in a semblance of abject terror sat the head of Tiger Claw.
The High Priest's prediction had indeed come true!
Leyendas y Tradiciones Oaxaqueñas
José María Bradomín,
pages 25-29.
Oaxaca, Oax., 1990.
Translated into English by Sam Forter