The Divided Americas: Ollin's Curse

My name is Ollin and my story begins in the Classic Period of Mesoamerican history. Many centuries ago, before my legacy of terror, I was a master builder of the Toltec tribe, the principal craftsman of the earthworks and the most skillful builder of my time. On the day of the highest sun, Spearthrower, ruler of the land, gathered me and his assembly of chiefs together at the Citadel with a plan to map the city of the gods. Spearthrower announced:

The gods have graced us with peace and prosperity, a time where tribes have come as one to create the great Mesoamerican civilization. Now is the time for us to build a fortress to last the ages. Our fortress will merge together the landscapes of the gods, bringing the surrounding mountains, forest, water, and sky to protect and nurture our land. Three pyramids will be erected in honor of our gods. These earthen watchtowers shall be placed directly below the stars and replicate the mountains they face. They will be connected by a path into the caverns of the dead, surrounding us, the living, with those we loved in this world. Where we now stand shall be god’s home, Teotihuacan!

As I listened to Spearthrower’s decree, a vision came upon me. I saw that completing this city would take many generations and that our plans for the city could be easily compromised. I stood at the footprint of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and asked the god of renewal, Quetzalcoatl, to grant me the power to construct the city under my guidance. Quetzalcoatl heard my plea. The deity gifted me temporary immortality with the condition that, on the final night of construction, I was to stand on top of the temple and give my life as intended. When the night came, I contemplated the curses that would befall me if I did not follow through in my arrangement. Suddenly, in the midst of my thoughts, I heard the thundering of Quetzalcoatl. His slithering tongue described the curse that I would suffer: “You—you, with your plot to disobey the Almighty—know this: if you do not uphold your part of the pact and sacrifice yourself at the end of the project, your body will be fragmented, divided, dismembered. Your connections to the stars, cosmos, rivers and land will be disrupted. Borders will rip your skin to pieces creating divisions amongst people, animals, and memories. You will enter the Coatlicue state, a whirlwind of neighboring cultures, and remain there forever, forced to travel the borderlands as you pick up pieces of history discarded across multiple worlds.” I contemplated his words over the weeks that followed.

I was one of the most capable builders the world had ever known, but I cherished my own life; I wondered if the wretched curse the god had described was not better than final death. Finally, I set my distant contemplations aside. Our civilization was advancing rapidly, and it was imperative that I use my gifts to build the monuments that Spearthrower had envisioned.

On the night I was to give my life away I broke my promise, for the greater good of the civilization.

Not long after I broke my promise to Quetzalcoatl, under the leadership of the ruler Moctezuma, the pyramids I had labored so long to build were seized by Hernán Cortés, a silver god that rode a beast from a faraway land. On this night of sorrows, Teotihuacan fell to rubble at the hands of a foreign army, now barely recognizable as a record of my people, I wept:

Great divine being, you have become fatigued, you have become tired: The heralds we thought you sent have rained over the city. Here, they have come to sit in your place, on your throne. Our temples made from stone, the strength of earth have been covered in drapes, gold, wood, gods, and entities. What was foretold by our rulers, those who governed this city has been compromised. The gods have been mortified by preposterous faith and belief! Come ask for your throne, your place, your land. Take possession of your house!

The gods, angered at me, did not hear my plea. Over the centuries that followed, new civilizations sprang up ever more divided. The land became like a split double-projection, dividing the map into North and South America. It is a memory of the past and my humanity began to change with it.

Chupacabra, Chupacabra! Chupacabra! Hide! Run! I was no longer Ollin and the new inhabitants of the land demonized me with the name Chupacabra. I lived near the Great wall of Mexico terrorizing people’s farmlands for livestock. Over time my body’s skin was beaten by the legacies of war and violence, resulting in a body shriveled by its past. My mind was clouded by the rage, toxins, and death that filled the land. My vision became hazy at the sight of watchmen guarding the states, occupying the land formerly held by my people. I had become a non-native, unrecognizable to the land I was born in. One night as I ran along the Mexico-US Barrier I came across a series of prototype walls that were to proliferate the line along the Divided states of North America. I punched, scratched, climbed, and dug at the walls. Defaced by exasperation I screeched:

Presidents have become gods and Homeland Security their barricades against the outside. The ground that was once shared by many has now been stolen by many more, terrorizing the outside with weapons, light, and walls. Fortification has become national, alienating the other using segments of wood, steel, and concrete along the boundary. As a result, humans have perished, animals have become extinct, land has been polluted, ecosystems have migrated, and cultures have been torn apart. The border walls demarcate the asymmetrical relationship between the two nation-states, like a material manifestation of the power imbalances that are embedded within the object. The wall is the border, it is the control and flow of people, it is the limit where the other side ends or begins.

I ran far away from the wall, deep into the territory that it has divided, full of horror, transformation, and flux. My humanity continued to change along with this deteriorating land.

I am now constructing another room, where I foretell what might come over the centuries ahead. The earth has been swallowed by my curse. Environmental degradation has melted the great precious stones of ice and water has taken over the lands. Humanity has created a fortress against nature that touches all parts of the world. The Americas have become archipelagos of devastations, and our greatest architects plan in vain against the unavoidable disaster. To this I say:

I have lived a timeline as long as that of god. I am no longer tied to the concept of time; rather, I have become a slave to the ideas of Western Man that construct borders around my consciousness, the land, and the universe, creating enclosures, fortresses that I can no longer escape. I record the consequences of eras and operate on the artifacts collected throughout. I now understand my curse: to lose my humanity is not to live my mundane existence, it is to live among all future human civilizations and see the outcomes of this world. Gods live away from the turmoil, the unbearable realities of the earth. I am no god, but a slave to the ruins of the world, accumulating fast and deep, now as ever.