Story of An Awakening Nican Tlaca
He is now 87 years old and he has unexpectedly learned the truth just now of all of the lies of his life
He is now awakened by the week of the visit of his granddaughter who spoke history to him
He is now awakened and he feels as if he has been living in death, as if he has been living as a fool
He is shaken to learn of his ancestors' accomplishments, their genius, their cities and civilizations
He is shaken to learn of the smallpox holocaust, of 70 to 100 million of his people killed
He is shaken to learn that the Hispanic/Latino identity he had used for the last 30 years was false
He is shaken to understand that his "mestizo" identity had made him live the life of a fraud
He is shaken to understand that he is in truth Nican Tlaca, an unused warrior, a wasted warrior
He is shaken to understand that he has lived as a foreigner on his own land: this whole continent
He is now at the end of his life and his first urge is to scream out at the top of his lungs: Monsters!
He is trying to figure out what he can do with all of this new knowledge of himself and his people
He is married to a wife that doesn't want to learn truth, "Ya pa que", that there's no point learning
He is both angered and motivated to learn more of what he can in the little time he has left
He is explaining all of this to his wife who is only more and more angered by his pursuit of truth
He is seeing a stranger in his wife who ridicules truth and does her rosary and reads the bible
He cries to the moon and yells into the rising sun and to the setting sun hoping he could relive his life
He drives one day to the mountains to breathe the clean air and to think of his wasted life
He drives to the ocean to see the vast body of water and he now sees his ancestors reflected there
He stays up one whole night staring at the stars as if for the first time, feeling lost, feeling awakened
Let not your life find you in old age wondering why you wasted your life on drugs and sports
Let not your life be wasted in church and materialism, in pursuit of selfish wants, selfish needs
Let not your life be found empty of any meaning, empty of enlightenment, empty of honor
