Los Sin Dios

By Ricardo Ignacio

The battle of a young indigenous American man who grows up like most other indigenous Americans suffering from the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, displacement, internalized racism, Stockholm syndrome, forced assimilation, and the ongoing colonialism that began in the year 1492.

The young man grows up with deep-rooted self-hatred, ashamed of his indigenous American roots—bleaching his hair, buying whitening creams, and using blue contact lenses—desperately attempting to erase all physical evidence of the obvious proof of who he is. Until, one day, his grandfather asks him why he hates himself so much and gives him an antique scroll written in the 1500s, which contains the root of where his problem of internalized racism began. The ancient scroll is written in Nahuatl, and the only way to learn Nahuatl is to return to Oaxaca, Mexico, where he was born and find someone that could teach him.

The question is does it matter enough to know what was written so long ago in an ancient language? And, if so, what will he discover? But, more importantly, what will he do with the information learned?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524626792

Ricardo Ignacio

I am Ricardo Ignacio, which is originally a Roman name that means “Powerful Fire.” I’m a Native American, descended from the people known as Chichimecah, and Cocopah. I first discovered that I had a passion for writing at age nine, in the sixth grade, when the school created a competition to see who could win the most votes for his or her short story. The competition was open to all fourth, fifth, and sixth graders who wanted to participate. The event took place on the playground where all the students and teachers sat in a huge circle and listened as each participant read his or her own short story out loud. I didn’t win the first-place award of a free pizza, but I did win something better: the realization that I had a passion for writing fictional stories that were usually developed out of the desire to escape the life that I lived. By age fourteen I was writing short novels and reading them to the other kids in the neighborhood. When I saw their eager faces as I read my stories, I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

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LOS SIN DIOS

Ricardo Ignacio

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AuthorHouse™

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© 2016 Ricardo Ignacio. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/24/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2680-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2678-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2679-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016914287

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Intro 1 The Question

Intro 2 The Answer

Chapter 1 Why Do You Hate Your Own Reflection?

Chapter 2 The Days of Self-Hate Are Over

Chapter 3 This Isn’t Work. This Is Life.

Chapter 4 An Alliance with Each Other

Chapter 5 Can’t Afford a Slave

Chapter 6 Speaking In Signs

Chapter 7 This Symbol

Chapter 8 The Demon

Chapter 9 No False Promises

Chapter 10 I Have Studied Their Past

Chapter 11 The Slave Has a Name?

Chapter 12 Our People Will Be No More

Chapter 13 Let’s Go Make New Friends

Chapter 14 A Bearded, White Face

Chapter 15 A Powerful Fire

Chapter 16 Together We Are Stronger

Chapter 17 The Time of Great War

Chapter 18 A New World on Top of Ours

Chapter 19 Never Bear Children with Those Demons

Chapter 20 Together We Will Rise Again

Chapter 21 Using Their Own Tools

Chapter 22 Where’s Your Heart?

Chapter 23 I’ve Learned from Them

Chapter 24 The Art of War

Chapter 25 The Native American War Manual

INTRO 1

The Question

MY NAME IS RICARDO IGNACIO. I am a twenty-nine-year-old Indigenous American, born in Ejido Hermosillo Baja California, Mexico.

The first six years of my life were spent in Mexicali, Mexico, but then I made my way to the state of California. It’s only a few hours away by car, but I walked to the United States, along with a group of other people. It took me almost two days to finally arrive here.

After I crossed the border into the United States and enrolled in elementary school, I found myself being labeled a Latino, and sometimes a Hispanic, and I would ask my mother, Ma, what’s a Latino? What’s a Hispanic?

She would reply, I don’t know. I guess that’s what they call us here.

Where we were born, terms like this did not exist, or at least they didn’t apply to us. People never identified themselves as Latinos or Hispanics, simply because they were not Latino or Hispanic. When I was left with no choice but to bubble in Hispanic, I began to wonder what a Hispanic was and why, if I was one, had neither my mother nor I, nor any members of our community in Mexico, ever identified as such.

However, as kids do, I eventually stopped wondering. Ever since that day, all the way through high school, I always bubbled in Hispanic on applications and other paperwork, even though I never once verbally claimed to be Hispanic or Latino. I just couldn’t do it; I felt a lump in my throat at just the thought of claiming such a thing, because I knew it was wrong to claim an identity that wasn’t mine.

But if I wasn’t a Hispanic or a Latino, then what was I? More important, why was I, in a sense, left with no choice but to identify myself as Hispanic or Latino? Whose agenda was this, and what exactly was their agenda?

That is precisely why I sat down and began to do some research. I didn’t rest for five years, until I got to the bottom of this question that was troubling me.

One night after arriving home from work, I sat down to watch TV. At the time, I hardly watched television—as opposed to now, when I don’t even own a TV—but when I actually had the time to, I watched only one channel, very late at night. I believe it was a local, non-cable channel, available only in my city, and it generally ran a never-ending series of stage plays, and sometimes classical music, but on very rare occasions it ran paid programming. That night I turned the TV on and found a paid program. I was about to turn it off to work on one of the many novels I was writing at the time, when something caught my ear.

It was a presentation by a Christian preacher who, at the very moment I turned on the TV, was saying this: The world has prophesied our coming since before we began to travel the world and preach our word. Even Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor, had prophesied the coming of the white man. When we arrived, he gave Cortez his throne because it was their prophecy that the white man would arrive and mark the beginning of a new way of life! We are not here by coincidence, ladies and gentlemen—we are destined to go all over the world, and preach the word of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Everything this preacher said, he said with a huge smile and much excitement, as though he truly believed in what he taught.

By the end of his sermon, my jaw had dropped. I was in pure disbelief that this Christian preacher actually tried to overlook, or even justify, the Crusades and the Native American holocaust by claiming that they were part of a prophecy to promote the Christian religion at whatever cost.

As soon as he was done preaching about his misinterpretation of Moctezuma’s prophecy, I turned off the TV, turned on my computer, opened a blank document, and began to write a new novel. This novel would be based on the actual events that occurred after Christopher Columbus arrived in America—the crimes the Europeans committed there, why those events happened and for how long, and how their aftermath affects Native Americans today.

I began to write this book, which describes with as much detail as I could possibly add the events that occurred after Columbus’s arrival. I stretch the time line all the way to how we Native Americans live today, which reflects the aftermath of the Crusades and the holocaust. I describe how those events and traumas have affected us, and continue to affect us. I also explain how we Native Americans eventually came to identify with terms such as Latino and Hispanic, whose agenda it is for us to do so, and why they are so determined to make us identify as such.

My sole intention with this novel is to create Native American characters who have the intellect, desire, and determination to find a solution to this problem and the knowledge of how to escape the conditions and environment created in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing and colonialism.

INTRO 2

The Answer

MY MOTHER AND HER PARENTS are originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, but they all headed farther north to live in what is known today as Mexicali. This was where my mother met my father. It was in San Luis Colorado Hermosillo, Sonora, that I was born and lived for my first six years. After that, my parents traveled farther north, to California, and raised me there.

Guanajuato is a region where not many Spaniards ventured when they first arrived in Mexico in the late 1400s. When other Europeans began to arrive in the 1600s, they called the indigenous people of the Guanajuato region Chichimecas, which today is a debatably degrading Nahuatl term that means perros altaneros (arrogant dogs), but which can also mean descendants of dogs. The debate revolves around whether the indigenous people labeled themselves dogs, viewing themselves as clever hunters, like canines, or whether the terminology was conferred by Europeans and actually intended to be degrading. The Europeans were well known for labeling Native Americans with disrespectful terms, as they usually viewed the Native people as savage animals.

Another reason the term Chichimeca might be considered degrading is because Spaniards were extremely frustrated with their inability to convince the Chichimecas to adopt Christianity. The Natives preferred their own belief system. The Spaniards also could not defeat the Chichimecas in battle. When the Chichimecas refused to surrender or accept enslavement, the Spaniards began calling the Natives of the Guanajuato region Chichimecas in Nahuatl, perros altaneros in Spanish, or arrogant dogs in English.

The Spaniards never defeated the indigenous people of Guanajuato in a fair battle, which led them to offer a peace treaty to the Chichimecas. However, it was really just a scheme to lower their defenses. The Spaniards offered the Chichimecas clothes covered with smallpox and food contaminated with diseases. This caused many of the Chichimeca leaders to perish, leaving the rest of the Natives defenseless against their conquerors. They were forced into becoming slaves to the Spaniards and speaking the Spanish language. They were also forced to practice the Spaniards’ Catholic religion, forget the indigenous culture, and adopt the Spanish culture. The Spaniards raped thousands of Chichimeca women, and so began the mestizaje—the forced mixture—during which women gave birth to children who were the products of rape.

Thus the word Mestizo (half-breed dog) was born. That is what the Spaniard fathers named their own children who were born to Chichimeca women. A big reason many indigenous people of the Americas reject the term Mestizo is that they are well aware of this history and consider the word degrading, a label used to disrespect and strip the Native people of their true identity and value. It is an effort to further misplace and ethnically cleanse Native Americans.

Most of the time when a so-called Mestizo child was born, he was raised as a mule-like creature, trained only for manual labor, and then either sold or traded to other European slave owners by his Spaniard rapist father.

If a Spaniard man didn’t want to keep the Native woman he had raped, rather than forcing her to birth his child, he would tie a rope around her legs, hang her from a tree, and cut open her pregnant belly. The unborn baby would fall to the ground and either be fed to dogs or have its head smashed against rocks in the name of Christ. Christian priests deemed this practice a means of saving the souls of savage half-dogs and half-human creatures. To their Christian god, Mestizos were a cursed breed.

This is part of my history; I am a product of it. And I am not ashamed of being an Indio—or, better yet, an Indigenous American.

I didn’t always know what I know now. For the first twenty-three years of my life, I was completely unaware of this history. I never once considered myself to be a Hispanic or a Latino, but I was still disconnected from my Indigenous American roots. I didn’t start to embrace those roots until one day when my grandfather, with whom I was on bad terms for many years, was sitting in a chair in my mother’s backyard, allowing the sun to lather him. Deciding to swallow his pride, he said to me as I walked by, Hey, what’s your age, Son?

Usually I ignored him, but this time I decided to reply and then brush him off. I’m twenty-five, sir.

He smiled. Oh, that’s a great age! I was married at that age.

I kept walking, but on my way to pick some oranges for my regular breakfast, I kept wondering about my grandfather’s life, wondering how he used to live and what had changed since his days. My curiosity got to me. After I picked some oranges from a tree in our backyard, I walked over to him and began asking him questions.

At first, he simply told me about his life, but then he began to add details about his indigenous identity. I began to ask more about his roots, and eventually, after I realized that I had much in common with my grandfather, I started to embrace my identity as the Indigenous American I consider myself today.

Thank you for reading the intro to my book. I hope you find the information useful. May this knowledge help you mature as a person, and may it also inform you of many things that you might not have known before reading my book.

And now I present to you my novel. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

Why Do You Hate Your Own Reflection?

I WAS TOLD THAT I am a descendant of a man named Ezekiel de Colon. Ezekiel was the son of Cristobal Colon, but his mother was an Arawak, specifically of the Taino tribe.

According to legend, Ezekiel’s father took him to Spain, but then Ezekiel fled Spain and sailed back home on his own. Before I get into that story, let me give you some background about me:

I grew up ashamed of being called what is known today as el Indio in Spanish, or the Indian in English—a label referring to the indigenous people of the Americas. I was mostly ashamed of my dark skin, my short stature, and my high cheekbones. My almond-shaped eyes made people refer to me as el Chino in Spanish, which meant the Chinese in English. My big lips caused me embarrassment in elementary school; all the kids teased me. Throughout my childhood, I did my best to stay away from the sun for fear of getting darker. I’d always found short, dark-skinned women hideous; I didn’t want my children to be cursed with this inferior skin color, which was the identity of el Indio. So throughout elementary school until high school, I denied who I was. Instead, I claimed to be Spanish and proudly spoke Spanish unless I was mingling with all my Caucasian friends, in which case I spoke English. I tried never to befriend a dark-skinned person.

Yes, that’s how much I hated my own reflection.

I dated only white women with blue eyes and blond hair, hoping that one day I’d be blessed enough to have children with one of these beautiful princesses. My children wouldn’t be born with dark skin, but instead would have that superior white appearance.

I use the phrase beautiful princess because many misinformed people tend to label Native American women as such. However, the word princess is degrading and racist in this context. When Europeans began to settle in North America, they claimed not to see beauty in Native American women. When European men began raping Native women or having children with them consensually, some of the female children were born with light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. The European settlers would view such a girl as more desirable than a Native girl, without European features were inferior.

When I was a child, my grandfather tried hard to teach me about my indigenous roots, but I refused to listen. In Spanish, I would shout, "Dejame en paz y fuera con esas cosas de Indios condenados! which means, Leave me in peace, and go away with that stuff belonging to those condemned Indians!"

My grandfather would look down at the floor in sorrow and weep, but I felt no mercy for him. He was not a righteous soul, but just a pair of hands. He was a fieldworker with no brains. How could I be proud of something that was mocked and humiliated by everyone? I was ashamed to have descended from those uneducated, miniature people with dark skin. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them!

Instead of claiming my Indigenous American identity, I claimed to be Latino or Hispanic, even though those are European identities. I wanted to be European; I wanted to claim that I was a descendant of Spain. Schoolbooks, the media, and society had taught me that European features were beautiful and superior, while the features of my people were ugly and inferior. As a result, looking and claiming to be white was my greatest endeavor, even if the mirror proved otherwise.

I hated my reflection; I hated mirrors because they revealed to me the image of what English speakers in the United States called a wetback. The term was highly degrading. Who in the world would want to embrace that?

In high school, the trend for kids like me was hair dye and colored contact lenses. I took to the trend. My beauty really emerged when I dyed my hair blond and inserted blue, or sometimes even green, contacts. After that I felt confident and proud of the superficial features with which I had adorned myself. My whole world expanded. I began embracing mirrors and flirting with white women, who, to my astonishment, suddenly found me attractive. Shockingly, it was even easier to make white friends. This feeling of acceptance gave me a reason to attend class earlier. Things had changed. I finally felt as though I belonged.

I dressed just like all my white friends; meanwhile, those dark-skinned Indians who walked past me stared and murmured under their breath. Their hatred made me smirk; I knew they envied my superiority, as I looked white and had white friends. They loathed me for having blue eyes and blond hair, and they were jealous that I was able to afford expensive clothing that helped me blend me in with my white friends. The dark-skinned Indians remained on the outskirts. That scum didn’t begin to appeal to me, and by the looks of it, they didn’t even appeal to themselves. As they walked by, I would think, Would you look at those worthless Indians.

The fact that I was nineteen and still working at a grocery store—more than a year after graduating high school—drove me insane. It was all because I was undocumented. The only way I’d gotten the job was by using a fake social security number and identification card. No matter how much I changed my appearance, my birthplace would remain the same.

I was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, but I was brought to the United States at age three by my parents. They didn’t speak fluent English; in fact, my parents spoke only a few words, and they did so with a strong accent. It was somewhat embarrassing to me in junior high when they’d speak during my parent-teacher conferences, and even more so when I was in high school.

Their first language was Mixtec, but as our region of Mexico was made up mostly of Spanish speakers, it was more relevant to be fluent in Spanish. So my parents decided to study Spanish in order to communicate with more people not only in Mexico, but in the United States as well.

One day while I was at work, my lack of focus made me drift off into space. I began analyzing my life and decided that ambition was a quality I needed to embrace. I had no plan for my future and no education beyond high school, even though my transcript was quite impressive. I knew I needed to enroll in college.

Two days passed. On Tuesday, I took advantage of my day off and went to fill out an application at a school I had in mind.

I spoke English well and was articulate, so it was no challenge for me to read books or communicate with people. By this time, my spoken and written English was more eloquent than my Spanish.

I’d never bothered to learn to speak Mixtec; my attitude was that only filthy savages spoke those Indian tongues.

That Tuesday, before arriving on the college campus, I took some of my savings and spent it on notepads, school supplies, and a nice, spacious backpack. Having graduated from high school with honors, I had a confident attitude walking into the college administration building. I approached the front desk with a huge smile.

Hello, the Mexican lady at the front desk said.

Hi, I’d like to enroll.

All right. She pulled out an application and handed me a black pen.

I hurried to fill it out, leaving one thing blank: my social security number.

I handed her the application. She skimmed through it and then looked up at me, saying, You forgot this one.

Let me see, I said, leaning toward her in order to have a closer look.

She pointed at the blank space. Social security number.

Oh. I … I … I began to get nervous. Then as quickly and quietly as possible, practically whispering, I said, I don’t have one.

What? she said loudly in her thick accent. You have no social security number?

I … I continued to stutter, looking around in embarrassment, hoping that nobody had heard her, dreading that someone would find out that I was a wetback.

Why don’t you have a social security number, huh? Who are you? What are you doing here? she asked me loudly.

I’m … I’m a student wanting to go to school. The palms of my hands and my forehead began to sweat, and my lips and mouth were drying up fast.

No, what are you? Where are you from? What are you doing in this country?

Shaking my head in disbelief, I slowly backed up until I gathered the courage to turn around, run off the campus, and sprint across the street to where I had parked my vehicle.

I sat in my car, exhausted and in disbelief. I felt confused, and I held on to the steering wheel trying to catch my breath.

What the hell just happened? I shook my head and began chuckling, almost laughing, to and at myself. After I was done laughing, I began to feel hurt, and from the hurt came anger. The anger made me yell and pound my fist against the steering wheel. You stupid, stupid bitch! Why the hell did you embarrass me like that? You stupid, rat traitor!

I felt betrayed by my own people, giving me more reason to reject them all.

I arrived home and barged in the door. My mother could see that I had been crying. When she asked me what was wrong, I simply shouted, Ya sabes, estos putos Indios malditos, condenados, inutiles, hijos de puta!—You know, these condemned sons of bitches, Indian whores!

Suddenly my grandfather walked into the kitchen where my mother and I were standing and said to me, Oye, sin verguenza, porque te odias a ti mismo tanto?—Listen, sellout, why do you hate yourself so much?

Mire, Abuelo, no quiero faltarle el respeto, por eso por favor, dejeme en paz!—Look, Grandpa, I don’t want to disrespect you, so please, leave me in peace!

He began taking big, long steps toward me, raising his voice. Eres indigena, cabron sin verguenza!—You’re indigenous, you shameless idiot!

Lo soy, pero no lo quiero ser! Los Indios son burros, son animales inferiores y sin educacion!—"I am, but I don’t want to be! Indians are mules; they’re inferior animals lacking