Awakening to the Rhythm of Life in Mexico

I waken early. Once awake I linger in bed for a few minutes listening to our Coyoacán neighborhood as it wakes up to another day in the Valle de México, Valley of Mexico.

Song of the Cenzontle

First comes the song of the cenzontle (curve-billed thrasher, Taxostoma curvirostre), who begins to sing in the predawn minutes then continues singing pretty much all day long. A cenzontle lived in the trees and shrubs of our garden in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. He also loved to perch on the ridge of the roof and sing, so we got a good look at him.

Curve-billed thrasher
Photo: Gerrit Vyn (Cornell Web Site)

The word cenzontle comes from the náhuatl word cenzon-tlahtol-e, formed from centzontli ("four hundred") and tlahtolli ("word" hence, "song"). Males have been known to have repertoires of fifty to two hundred songs. After numerous tries over almost a week, today I succeeded in getting a good recording of the centzontle's song at the Botanical Garden in Chapultepec Park.

The cultured and enlightened ruler of Texcoco, Nezahualcóyotl, wrote this poem about the beauty of the cenzontle's song:

I love the song of the cenzontle,
bird of four hundred voices;
I love the color of jade and the enervating perfume
of the flowers;
but I love more my brother
man.

Amo el canto del cenzontle,
pájaro de cuatrocientas voces;
amo el color del jade y el enervante perfume
de las flores;
pero amo más a mi hermano
el hombre.

According to the shamanic tradition out of which grew Mesoamerican religious thought and practices, each person has an animal spirit, called a nahua. The cenzontle is the traditional nahua of women blessed with beautiful singing voices.

Street Sweeper

Another early morning sound is the clatter of metal wheels as the street sweeper's cart bounces along the pavement, followed by a brief silence, then...the slow, steady, swish-swish strokes of the street sweeper's barrido manual.

Street Sweeper with his barrido manual on Paseo de la Reforma (Mexico City).
The natural fiber brooms are traditional and distinctive.

The tradition of sweeping predates the arrival of the Spanish. We saw nearly identical brooms in Michoacán, and we have seen them elsewhere in Mexico, which suggests that the tradition was widespread throughout Mesoamerica—and continues today. 

Until I went down to take this photo, I hadn't realized that our
street sweeper also sweeps the sidewalk. The woman in the coral dress has a
broom in her left hand. Housewives and household help throughout Mexico routinely sweep the walks in front of their homes. From our neighbor's house on the corner, her family runs a tiendita, neighborhood grocery and snack shop.  

Mesoamerican cultures had invented the wheel, but in the absence of animals that could be domesticated to pull vehicles with wheels, they had no incentive to invent the cart. Above all, Mexico's mountainous terrain made horse or ox-drawn carts impractical. On the mountain paths, humans carrying loads on their backs were most efficient. So, instead, they put wheels on animal figures in honor of the deities.

Jaguar carved in obsidian with wheels.

Recently, Reed came upon a list of activities associated with each month of the solar calendar. In essence, community life was organized to assure that the community produced what it needed not only to survive but to stay healthy: water festivals occurred in early spring to assure arrival of the life-giving rains, followed by planting rituals, etc., throughout the year. Sweeping and bathing rituals were practiced the same month as feasts for celebrating the harvests. It certainly makes sense to schedule cleanup of place and people after the annual harvest commotion!

Calzada de Tlalpan


We live a couple of blocks from the Calzada de Tlalpan, a busy six-lane expressway that follows the same route as the original causeway built by the Aztecs to provide access by land to their island capital at Tenochtitlán. During the night, traffic noise just about disappears, but it picks up by 4:30 AM and by 6:00 AM it is a dull roar.

Volcanoes

By the time I get up, the sun is rising behind the volcanoes visible from our living room windows.

Popocatéptl is at the right; Popo's beloved Iztaccíhuatl lies to the left on her
funeral bier with her head almost at the margin—the crater of an extinct volcano
forms her breast; her knees and feet extend along the mountain range to the right.

The Many Layers of Mexico's Culture

I haven't even made my coffee yet, but I've already experienced many layers of Mexican culture. The cenzontle and the volcanoes, of course, put me in direct contact with the natural forces that are a vital cultural component. The street sweeper's broom hearkens back to Mesoamerican times, but the wheeled cart is a Spanish innovation. It was the Spanish who brought with them the draft animals—horses, oxen, burros—needed to pull carts.

Earlier posts have discussed the Mesoamerican cosmovision, or view of the universe. They showed how early peoples conceived of time as cyclic rather than linear. The sun's diurnal cycle (day, night) is the most obvious. It was closely followed by others grounded in astronomical observations: the lunar month, the Venus cycle and, of course, the sun's annual cycle (north to the summer solstice; south to the winter solstice). BTW—yesterday was the summer solstice. Because we are so far south, it means that at high noon, we stand on our own shadows. Wild!

To Mesoamerican thinkers and theologians, the astronomical cycles merged with the annual cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of plant growth, which combined to form an all-encompassing cosmic system. To their minds, this cosmic system was sustained by the spiritual energy of the ollín, or life-force.

Ollín, endless motion, the life-force itself, was conceived to be the essence of all existence. This representation from Tlatelolco is the most commonly seen symbol for ollín. Note the circle at the center, which becomes the column in the object that follows. 

During a recent visit to the Templo Mayor Museum of Tenochtitlán in the center of Mexico City, I was surprised to see a very different representation of ollín:

This column is said to represent the axis mundi (world axis that connects the earthly plane with the heavens above and the underworld below); the spirals represent ollín, endless motion (energy) or life-force, that is the essence of all existence. 

All of which brings to mind a memorable Spanish class—one of many at CELEP in Pátzcuaro. My teacher and I were discussing the Mesoamerican concept of time as cyclic and contrasting it with the Western concept of time as linear. As we chatted, it suddenly dawned on me that cyclic and linear concepts of time represent two extremes. What it would mean, I mused, if time were conceived as a spiral instead? Like a cycle, a spiral passes over the same points, but with each pass it moves over a slightly different point, either higher or lower.

According to the museum curator's note, the spiral represents the ascent and descent of ollín—movement of divine forces (energy)—between the three levels of existence: the heavens above, the earthly plane, and the underworld below. Thus, at the very center of the Mesoamerican cosmovision rests the spiraling cycle of energy, the ollín, the life-force that drives the universe.

Walking to the Tianguis de sábado, Saturday Open-Air Market,
we were struck to see this topiary in front of a sports gymnasium.
Appropriately, it is shaped into the form of ollín. 

So in the cenzontle's song, in the sun rising over the volcanoes, in the sounds of the street sweeper's cart wheels and the rhythmic swish of his broom, in the traffic noises from the Calzada de Tlalpan, each morning I experience anew the never-ending, always-changing rhythm of ollín. 

Still Curious?

If you'd like to listen to another of the cenzontle's songs, click on Cornell's web site for the curve-billed thrasher. Scroll down and click on "Sound". The second recording (Robert B. Angstadt, Texas, April 1961) captures the 'call and response' songs of two male cenzontles. The first male 'calls'; then, from a distance, a second male 'responds' with a song based on a descending scale. It is this song that captured our attention in Pátzcuaro. It also captivated a neighbor, who told us it is the song of the cenzontle.

Although my skills as a videographer are a tad challenged, I thought you might like to hear the distinctive swish of the street sweeper's barrido manual, which I finally managed to capture on this video (15 sec).

Here's my best street sweeper video (2:06) filmed today, where against all odds I managed to capture cart and worker. I enjoy it when the sweeper puts his barrido manual, broom, back on the cart—the 'flag' of his trade!  I still haven't figured out how to edit the video. I recommend you stop at 2:06! If I could figure out how to do it, I'd cut the rest.

Until I tried to video the street sweepers' activities, I hadn't understood their schedule. What I hear from bed is their 6:00 AM arrival down the main street that crosses our street. Then they make a loop and come back to our street, which is when I made this video (35 sec). This segment is also technically challenged but if you have patience, you will glimpse two men pushing their carts down the street.

Anecdote: There's a story behind why I'm filming the street sweepers from our balcony. The first morning, I went outside, greeted the street sweeper and asked if I could film him working. Although his facial expression remained genial (no 'mask'), he was adamant: "No se permite", it isn't allowed.   

He then explained that a friend of his had been photographed, and it had caused all kinds of problems for him at the 'bodega' (I assume he meant the staging area where they store their carts). I quickly assured him that I had no desire to cause him problems, and I asked if I could photograph him with his back to me: 

"I really want a picture of your barrido manual." 

He was agreeable to that, and I snapped the photo that appears above in the post. He also indicated that it would be okay for me to photograph him from our balcony, so that's why I filmed from above.  

Moving on...here's the original Spanish of the curator's note [Templo Mayor Museum, Mexico City]:

"La pieza cilíndrica con relieves espirales recuerda la forma en que los mexicas, de acuerdo con su cosmovisión, concebían el movimiento de las fuerzas divinas cuando se desplazaban entre los niveles celestes del universo, la superficie terrestre y el inframundo".