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Sacrifice

By Charley Trujillo

Memorial Day is a holiday that, apart from being a great weekend of shopping sales, commemorates US military war dead. Invariably, political speeches and writings by politicians, media editorials and commentaries will say, in one form or another, "...for those who sacrificed their lives for freedom and democracy." However abhorrent the idea of human sacrifice is to the Western mind it is historically common in many cultures. For example, most Western historians and anthropologist claim that the Aztecs (Mexicas) practiced human sacrifice. Academics have written that on one sacrificial binge 100,000 people were sacrificed. For one, this would be logistically impossible given the technology of the time and the supposed ceremonial manner in which the honored victims were dispatched. However, many indigenous elders assert that human sacrifice by the Aztecs is a pernicious fabrication used as an ideological tool to discredit and suppress indigenous people and culture.

Let us suppose that the Aztecs did practice human sacrifice as Western academics claim. One of the principal deities of the Aztecs was Huitzilopochtli the god of war and the sun. Huitzilopochtli required that someone be sacrificed everyday or else the sun would not rise. Legend has it that when the Aztecs were living in Aztlan—that some think was somewhere in the present-day Southwest—a high priest had a vision that Huitzilopochtli commanded that it was their manifest destiny to leave and settle in a place where they saw an eagle perched upon a cactus devouring a serpent. After years of wandering, they witnessed such an event in the middle of lake Texcoco in what is now Mexico City. Hence the iconic symbol on the Mexican flag of an eagle devouring a serpent.

The Aztecs were militaristic and aggressive. Within a hundred years of founding their capitol Tenochtitlan, it became the most powerful city-state in the valley of Mexico. They kept expanding their influence from sea to shining sea until the Spanish arrived in central Mexico in 1519 and eventually overthrew them.

Just as the Aztecs did, the United States also believed that a deity ordained them exceptional. They believed that it was their manifest destiny to spread the ideals of freedom and democracy. These ideals however were not meant for African slaves, Native Americans, Chicanos and Asians but for free white men. Under the guise of manifest destiny the United States subdued Native Americans, invaded Mexico and gobbled up its present-day Southwest. It continued its mission of spreading its ideals of freedom and democracy internationally through invasions and wars up to the present. These ideals, however, are oddly measured when democratically elected governments are brought down by the United States. For example, the democratically elected governments of Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, and Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009 were either directly or indirectly overthrown by the United States. Undemocratic governments that are lead by brutal and repressive regimes that comply with United States political and economic policies often replace them. As president Franklin Roosevelt said about the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch."

Under the presumption that the United States is the guardian of freedom and democracy, the ideological apparatuses of both the private and government sectors are able to convince many people that this presumption is true regardless of the glaring contradiction. One person who spoke out against this contradiction was Malcolm X when he stated, "American democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy."

Allegedly, the Aztec sacrificial victims were led up the steps of a temple where they were laid on their backs on a large stone and held down by four priests each holding a limb of the victim. With an obsidian knife in hand a fifth priest would tear open the chest of the honored victim. He would yank out the pulsating heart, cup it in his in hands and hold it up to the heavens as an offering to Huitzilopitchli. The body was then flung down the steps on its way to paradise and eternal glory.

Although the United States certainly does not sacrifice its people in this manner it is more than symbolic when on Memorial Day, speeches honor the war dead who have sacrificed their lives for freedom and democracy. After all, "freedom isn't free," and sacrificing people is abhorrent.

Charley Trujillo is a Vietnam veteran. He served in the Americal Division in Vietnam as an infantry Sergeant from 1-1-70 to 7-26-70. He was wounded and evacuated to Japan. He graduated from UC Berkeley and San Jose State. He is the author of Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam and Dogs From Illusion two Vietnam War books. He also directed the documentary Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam. He lives in San Jose, California.