6/1/2023 0 Comments Chac mool sparknotesPepe knows that I've been looking for a reasonable replica of the Chac-Mool for a long lime, and today he told me about a little shop in the flea market of La Lagunilla where they're selling one, apparently at a good price. That may be why he likes to relate to indigenous themes all the theories he concocts for me. I spend my weekends in Tlaxcala, or in Teotihuacán. "Pepe knew that ever since I was young I've been mad for certain pieces of Mexican Indian art. And that’s what Mexico is all about: you have to kill a man in order to believe in him." The qualities of charity, love, and turn-the-other-cheek, however, are rejected. ? But a God that’s not only sacrificed for you but has his heart torn out, God Almighty, checkmate in Huitzilopochtli! Christianity, with its emotion, its bloody sacrifice and ritual, becomes a natural and novel extension of the native religion. What could be more natural than to accept something so close to your own ritual, your own life. The Spanish arrive and say, Adore this God who died a bloody death nailed to a cross with a bleeding wound in his side. He's not a believer, but he's not content to stop at that: within half a block he had to propose a theory. He saw me coming out of the Cathedral, and we walked together toward the National Palace. "In addition to his passion for corporation law, Pepe likes to theorize. his seniority ignored and his pension lost. The reasons, in short, for his being fired. It should be a record-yes, it began that way-of our daily office routine maybe I’d find out what caused him to neglect his duties, why he'd written memoranda without rhyme or reason or any authorization. On the bus I ventured to read it, in spite of the sharp curves, the stench of vomit, and a certain natural feeling of respect for the private life of a deceased friend. An old newspaper expired lottery tickets a one-way ticket to Acapulco-one way?-and a cheap notebook with graph-paper pages and marbleized-paper binding. As I was eating my breakfast eggs and sausage, I had opened Filiberto’s satchel, collected the day before along with his other personal belongings from the Müllers’ hotel. Near Tierra Colorada it began to get hot and bright. When we left Acapulco there was still a good breeze. When I arrived, early in the morning, to supervise the loading of the casket, I found Filiberto buried beneath a mound of coconuts the driver wanted to get him in the luggage compartment as quickly at possible, covered with canvas in order not to upset the passengers, and to avoid bad luck on the trip. Of course we all knew he'd been a good swimmer when he was young, but now, at forty, and the shape he was in, to try to swim that distance at midnight! Frau Müller wouldn't allow a wake in her hotel- steady client or not just the opposite, she held a dance on her stifling little terrace while Filiberto, very pale in his coffin, awaited the departure of the first morning bus from the terminal, spending the first night of his new life surrounded by crates and parcels. Even though he'd been fired from his government job, Filiberto couldn't resist the bureaucratic temptation to make his annual pilgrimage to the small German hotel, to eat sauerkraut sweetened by the sweat of the tropical cuisine, dance away Holy Saturday on La Quebrada, and feel he was one of the "beautiful people" in the dim anonymity of dusk on Hornos Beach. It was only recently that Filiberto drowned in Acapulco.
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