Introduction

A consistent belief between many indigenous communities throughout Mesoamerica, is that the natural world is sentient.  The earth has the power to feed you through the care of its fertile soil, an opportunity to shelter you through its mud and fauna, and the power to fill you with hope and wonder at its magnificence.  Indigeneous communities shared a common bond and deep understanding of this world.  There is an element of care, ritual, and respect that created a symbiotic relationship between person and earth.  This is most evident in the way that indigenous communities deified the elements.   When settler colonialism invaded the land with its sterile, egomaniacal perspectives, they were faced with the task of overwriting these wild, powerful, all-encompassing and free deities with something tamable.  Afterall, if they believed that “God created man in his own image,” then what does this say about the indigenous communities and their deities?  

As a way to implement and continue colonial views over the centuries, there have been attempts to wrestle, classify, and straightjacket the very elements that provide, as a way to further separate communities from their indigenous past.  Flora and Fauna is replaced with capitalism and steel.  When peeling back the concrete layers from our modern eyes, we will find that soft glimmers of this ingenious world still exist and whisper to us if only we were to  listen.  It is the focus of this paper to listen intently for these connections as a way to form a bridge of reciprocity between myself, indigenous generations before me, and the reverberating Earth.

Agua Antigua

Santa Ana is small in stature at approximately 27 square miles within the 948 square miles that make up Orange County.  As my birthplace, I often wondered how this marginalized community of predominantly Mexican and Latin American people had been bound into this area.  The Santa Ana River and the Santa Ana Winds flow and blow through its namesake and rush toward the ocean like most economically-able people in the larger county.  What at first can be yet another symbol for an unobtainable alternate reality, with ear to soil, one can make out whispers from ancestral origins. 

The Santa Ana Winds

The Santa Ana Winds begin in the hot Mojave Desert and are first met by the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Here the wind splits into the Diablo Winds of the North and the Santa Anas to the South.  The Wind gains speed as it slopes down the Santa Ana Mountains and rushes to the Pacific Ocean.  The Wind is mighty in its ferocity and can often exasperate wildfires due to their lack of humidity and unstoppable nature. 

In order to unpack the elements, specifically the Wind, to its ancestral form, one must free them of their colonial restraints.  The Wind does not care which boundary you give it or how you wish to tame it.  These names are a futile attempt to conquer and own that which cannot be possessed.  It is this Spirit of rebellion and resistance to the behemoth of conquest that the Santa Ana Winds may be giving to its namesake every season.  

Wind and Breath

The word wind can be unpacked further.  The word is a construct used to understand the natural movement of air but is no different than breath, speech, or respiration.  This is offered as an example to challenge that these are all the same and only serve as remnants of a colonial need for categorization.  Furthermore, Emanuele Coccia posits that the separation between fauna and element can be blurred further.  “This overlap is what the ancients called “breath” (pneuma). To blow, to breathe—means in fact to have this experience: what contains us, the air, becomes contained in us; and, conversely, what was contained in us becomes what contains us.”  We as fauna  filter the air in the atmosphere the same that flora upon the earth and soil upon the ground.  It’s this egalitarian notion that takes us one step closer to understanding indigenous cultures.

It is this harmonious cycle that brings us to another, the Water cycle.  Just as the air is processed through the living inhabitants upon the Earth, so is water in a constant state of transportation.  Both are characterized as transient by nature.  What is more incredible is that the same air and water that has been gasped, spoken, and filtered by this generation was also giving life to our ancestors and indigenous origins.  

Wind and Water

I bring forth the illustration of a cave to the left for contemplation.  This is a life-size relief carved on the side of the Chalcatzingo Monument.  The original relief has “El Rey” seated inside the cave, omitted here for clarity.  As Houston and Taube explain, “the entire scene contains cloud motifs, falling, rain, and growing maize indicating that these mouth scrolls are probably not sound but breath-like emanations of water filled clouds or mist.”  A notable component to this carving is that there is no hierarchical difference between the natural elements and El Rey they encapsulate, therefore equating the elements such as Earth, Wind and Water as deities themselves.   Furthermore, to reference a previous point, can this be another false attachment to colonial categorization?  They are depicted in the image as a whole.  As deities they are one and the same but the idea of four separate elements is most likely a western idea implemented to detach indigenous communities from the sentient environment upon colonization.  Separated into coquerable parts and labeled distinctly so as to never gain synergetic power again.

Water as a Nomad

Just like the Wind, Water does not acknowledge attempts to divide or categorize.  Water just as the other elements are nomads and in a constant state of transit.  The US Mexico border may extend into the Pacific Ocean (pictured below), but the Water continues its course with greater purpose than the one proposed.  Water beats against the iron bars corroding them from below whispering to the people the fallibility of such constructs.

This is not to say that drastic efforts have not been made to encapsulate and dam water to prevent it from flowing to intended destinations.  What is being stated is that water is patient and persistent.  Whether through precipitation, osmosis, or gradual deterioration, water will not be stopped for its divine purpose is beyond objectification.  The Santa Ana River itself exits into Huntington Beach and joins the California current which travels south until it meets the North Equatorial Current and migrates west.  This means that the Water from my home state of California meets the water from my mother’s home state of Michoacán before continuing its migration elsewhere.  The water exonerates us of any illegality and gives us agency over migration regardless of direction.

MICHOACÁN & THE RIVER THAT SINGS

As my mother’s home state, Michoacán began to illuminate paths of understanding beyond point of origin.  The name of her birthplace, El Aguaje, is a Spanish term with several meanings related to water. When used for its meaning as a watering place, aguaje is a geographic locale which can be a spring, a stream, arroyo or other natural water feature or a well that reliably provides water.  She tells tales of growing up near a river which unbeknownst to her is a tributary of Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake measuring 48 miles x 10 miles.  Although Michoacán is Nahuatl for possessor of fish and means the place of the fisherman, I am interested in how my family’s ancestors the Purépechas’s descriptions still live on today, such as the Cupatitzio River which translates to the river that sings in Purépecha.  

As De Orellana explains, “Different peoples of ancient Mexico had different names for the same god.  The Mayas called him Chac; the Zapotecs Cocijo; The Mixtecs Tzahul; the Totonacs Tjin and the Purepechas Tiripime.”  Meaning that although the terminology for understanding differed amongst the indigenous tribes, the divinity of Water was agreed upon.  The Purépechas were no different.  They also had a separate deity  Xarátenga (pictured right), which was specifically the goddess of the sea and the moon. Xarátenga’s domain was in the West meaning the Pacific Ocean, and she was symbolized as an owl, a crone or a coyote.  This is comparable to how some peoples had different deities for saltwater and freshwater or rain. 

My Mother as a Nomad

Having discussed the relationship between wind, respiration, water, and the body as a vessel both made of and containing these elements, our connections to these elements become apparent.  My mother who never wore shoes before entering the US was connected to the Earth and its vibrations beyond comprehension by someone who has been born inching away from that world the moment I was disconnected from my mother.  

In this search for reattachment to this indigenous past, I have come to see my mother’s migration to the US (approximation pictured below) as synonymous to the paths of the Santa Ana River or the Santa Ana Wind.  It meanders through the land mimicking a winding river or the water-based blood in her veins.

Monarchs as Generational Knowledge

At only a fraction of a gram in weight, the significance of the Monarch butterflies surpasses their bodies.  Michoacán has five Monarch Sanctuaries and the Purépechas constructed legends around these winged beauties.  Known for their long migrations (pictured right), the Purépechas believed they were the souls of loved ones coming back from the dead in time for Dia de los Muertos.  

It’s fascinating to learn that the Monarchs do not complete their journey in one generation.  Without instruction, the descendents pick up where their parents left off and continue this path as if the earth is calling them to do so.  In this matter I see this work.  I am governed by the vibrations of the earth and steered by my indigenous ancestors. 

Agua Prohibida

The Santa Ana River began my research for understanding and now only seems like a component to a larger knowledge.  The flooding of the Santa Ana (and Los Angeles) River in 1861 began a government need to attempt to tame the water due to the amount of state property that was destroyed.  There had been other floods before but this flood directly devastated the state’s versus civilian’s property.  This led to the building of the Prado Dam under the guise of flood control and the  building of the more recent Seven Oaks Dam as a way for locals at the mouth of the river to capitalize on the water.  Although the Santa Ana River has two dams prohibiting water from reaching its namesake, in the 1970s the riverbed that passes through Santa Ana was lined with concrete.  This was no longer for flood control.  The lining led to increased property values and led to new commercial,  residential, and industrial developments in the surrounding area with no thought given to the river itself.  

This was not an attempt to beautify Santa Ana but to further tear the marginalized communities from their indigeneity.  They were stripped from sight and sound of the river and natural world.  It also inflicts new forms of oppression in the form of de facto segregation.  The concrete lining of the river was a way to displace those that lived around the river which were poor and often homeless communities. 

This paper began with pondering how the small area of Santa Ana and its predominantly marginalized population could exist surrounded by affluent Orange County.  It turns out that the lining of the Santa Ana River was the last nail in the coffin.  The first beginning with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.  This law promised to construct over 41,000 miles of interstate highway connecting the capitals of each state and major cities across the US.  Under the guise of this Act, States used it as an opportunity to bulldoze and displace areas that they felt were blighted.  More than 475,000 households and over 1 million people were affected by this.  So how does Santa Ana and its people exist in this way?  Because it is effectively surrounded by concrete boundaries formed by State Highways,  Interstate Freeways and the cementing of the Santa Ana River.  Just as the Elements are tenaciously deconstructing the colonial structures that wish to restrain them, so must the people of Santa Ana.