Chapter Two: The Creation of Men
The “Popol Vuh” or “Book of Councils” was effectively the Bible of the Quiché-Maya of what today is Guatemala. It is also perhaps the best-known literary text of the pre-Hispanic era in the Americas. This chapter offers us a Mayan view of the flawed creation of the first humans.
The life and work of Gabriela Mistral (real name Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) was profoundly marked by the tragic loss of her first and only love in 1907 when she was only eighteen years old. The pain of loneliness is a constant theme in her poetry, but not so constant as the triumph of love, particularly love for children. Although she never had children of her own, her poetry and her tireless work as an educator made Nobel Academy Secretary Hjalmar Gullberg name her “the great songstress of mercy and motherhood”.
César Vallejo
Wandering aimlessly, Juncio and Analquer of the tribe of the Soras reached the valleys and high plains located on the edge of the Urubamba, where the first civilized towns of Peru are found.
Horacio Quiroga
One day the snakes held a great ball. They invited the frogs and the toads, the flamingos, and the alligators and the fish. The fish, as they couldn’t walk, weren’t able to dance; but as the ball was on the riverside, they jumped up onto the sand and clapped along with their tails.
Rubén Darío
Where? Far away, the overwhelming, monumental view of strange architectures, visionary orders, styles of a portentous and extravagant Orientalism. At his feet, a livid soil; not far away, the foliage of thin, desolate trees, stretching up towards an implacable sky, silent and strange, their branches pleading, in the vague expression of a mute lament. In that solitude, Honorio feels a cold fright possess him…
Chapultepec
Reyna Paniagua was born in Mexico City on October 24, in the year (of our Lord) 1953. Native of the suburb of Santa Maria la Ribera, she studied against her will in many schools run by nuns until senior high school. She then studied Medicine willingly at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), specializing in psychiatry and psychoanalysis until the 1980s. She later studied Literature in the 90s, and completed a Masters in Comparative Literature in 2006.
Identity
David Tenorio is a young poet originally from Mexico City who has worked in Canada for the last three years in the fields of immigration, translation and social assistance. Some of his poems have been read at the Cultural Celebration of the Spanish Language, a conference organized annually by Professor Margarita Feliciano of York University. Currently, David is studying his bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies, translation and psychology at Glendon College, the bilingual campus of York University, Toronto.
Martin Boyd
A lot of Mexicans had complained that it hadn’t been the pot of gold the Americans had promised it would be, but NAFTA had been good to Emilio Panzón. Since 1994, his fleet of trucks had made a fortune for him, carrying automotive parts up to California and returning with loads of cheap washing machines and dryers. Actually, his fleet had been doing the same since 1978, but in 1994, it all became legal. This cut down costs considerably, as he no longer had to pay the obligatory “commissions” at the U.S. border.