The death that gives life

Dr. Manuel Alberto Morales Damián
Research Professor in the Academic Area of History and Anthropology

Death is a condition of life, it is part of it and it is only a moment in the continuous cycle of natural and human existence; death is not definitive, nor a disastrous end for human beings, but it is part of a transformation process that guarantees the perennial existence of nature. These are some of the ideas that we can extract from the historical study of pre-Hispanic indigenous thought about death.

In the codices -those marvelous indigenous testimonies that use visual and written forms of communication-, the god of death is usually represented as a lord who governs the underworld, a subway, humid space populated by seeds. In reality, the god of death is considered a fecund, and that is why he is represented ejaculating while holding a cloud laden with rain or is shown in a birthing position, so that death is both masculine and feminine, an androgynous man who has the power to give life. Following the gender patterns of the indigenous world, death dressed as a woman sits down to weave or covers herself with the hip cloth of the men to carry out the activities of the milpa: felling, burning the forest, ploughing the land. Death, therefore, populates daily life: it is in the rain, in the bush, in the house, in the milpa.

In the lower section of page 29 of the Madrid Codex, death is represented with her legs and arms open, in her hands she holds some seeds, at her feet rest two images of the lord of corn. This posture is precisely the one in which women used to place themselves in pre-Hispanic times when they were about to give birth. Breaking the western schemes of representation, we can see the exposed spine. Also the face lacks flesh, it is a skull in profile whose orbit has been occupied by a blue rattle; the eye rattles-balls are also arranged to decorate her headdress, neck, ankles and wrists. In one of her hands she holds a glyph representing a corn seed from which some leaves sprout; in the other the same glyph combined with another to signify food. On the right foot sits the corn god, represented as the tender corn and on the left foot another image of corn with a yellow face and closed eye, identifies the ripe and dead corn. Those who have been fortunate enough to observe the agricultural process know that when the corn ripens and the harvest is prepared, the cane of the plant is usually broken to dry it. Thus, around the god of death, the sprouting seed, the tender corn, the ripe corn and the food are shown. This is the cycle of corn.

Mexicans recognize that corn is our fundamental food, not only of our body but also of our culture. Well, the agricultural cycle, fundamental for life, is dominated by the lord of death. As ruler of the underworld, death makes the seed sprout and sustains the tender corn, but it is also responsible for its death and, therefore, is the one to whom we owe our flesh, the corn dough that feeds us and gives us life.

One way of calling the god of death is "El apestoso" (the stinking one). Death brings the putrefaction of the flesh with stenches that today we seek to avoid, but in an agrarian society, organic waste and its decomposition are part of the regeneration of the earth, they are the manure that fertilizes it. In this way, although in our time it is surprising, death is considered in indigenous thought as an indispensable condition for living. To die is to give birth.

To analyze pre-Hispanic indigenous thought is to discover other ways of understanding reality and approaching human existence. Their way of understanding death explains why today, despite the passing of the centuries, Mexicans joke with death and invite it into our house, we are not afraid of it, we know that it also celebrates life.