The tale about the two water creatures inundating the land is very well known throughout the southern part of the Xochiatipan municipality; almost every person is acquainted with the events and is willing to share his vision on them. It is one of the most prevalent tales people come up with when they are asked to tell a tale. On many occasions, while chatting in somebody’s house about the village’s peculiarities, there was always somebody who would bring up the subject of the water creatures. The tale is, by far, the most illustrative example of a Huastecan Nahua true tale. Whatever the identity of the second water being is believed to be, all people are convinced of the truthfulness of the appearance, threat and departure of the two water creatures in former days.
The tale’s two narrators, Don Gregorio and Don Pedro, are convinced too about the tale’s true contents. During the performance, they both insist on the existence of eyewitnesses and the devastating consequences of their appearance had the mass not been held. Regarding the eyewitnesses, Don Gregorio says his own grandfather told him about the events; Don Pedro alleges an old man passed on the correct information. Sources like these are held to be reliable not only because of their presence on the scene but also because of their advanced age. Additional comments like “you would not say it was pretty” (line 362) or the descriptions “it was not a fish, but a snake, a water snake” (line 163) and “se michi, se michi, se peskaro” (line 253) --in the latter the narrator borrows the Spanish pescado (fish) to emphasize its animal shape and character-- connote belief. The narrators’ wish to explain the
creatures’ external details is because they want to convey truth to their rendering.
At the end of Don Gregorio’s performance, the truth issue is taken up again when the grandfather’s testimony is repeated (lines 164-165). Don Pedro does the same when he mentions that the ravine where the fish once lived has been reduced to a small hole (lines 418-422). The ravine’s former existence is sufficient proof to make the listener aware of the fact that the tale has a historical foundation. It reveals once more that the tale must be situated in the past, for years have gone by. Besides, it shows that the incident was really exceptional since the gorge was even deeper before than it is now. Naming it while finishing the tale is another reminder of the story’s genuineness.
Don Gregorio’s and Don Pedro’s texts intertwine two events, which might also have been told separately: at one particular place, a crayfish appears but is chased away; at another spot, a water snake or fish appears and is driven away. In fact, I have recorded multiple versions, in which only one of the two beings is the protagonist. People usually speak about the creature that was nearest to their homes and, accordingly, caused the most immediate peril. They do not often combine these events with the ones that occurred somewhere else. Don Gregorio was asked to tell only about the xili and Don Pedro narrated about the other water creature. Both, however, elaborated on the flooding produced by the two water beings, giving this additional information, which they provided voluntarily, a prominent place in the tale. Though this assimilation or processing of two true tales in one sole rendering is uncommon, the two renderings are the most extensive ones recorded on the theme of the water creatures, and thus most probably reveal a great number of details on Huastecan Nahua narrative.
The combination of two tales into one has consequences for the tale’s structure. Don Gregorio’s efforts to combine the two creatures and the threats they pose into one narrative is not without its flaws. It is said that both beings lived at about the same time in the municipality. At that moment, Don Gregorio observes a sequential order in which he discusses the life of both beings one after the other. At the beginning of his performance, he mentions the xili’s appearance, but does not describe the succeeding events involving the animal. He then provides a full account on the water snake[187]. At the end, he repeats the xili’s fate, saying that “two things” happened back then (line 81), a remark that is a valid conclusion for both animals, although the xili does not seem to have played a proper role as a protagonist. In turn, Don Pedro seems to incorporate both true tales creatively and without effort, maybe due to the fact that he says a personal eyewitness informed him about the xili in detail, and that he himself lives in
the village where the fish appeared. As the xili was growing near a village called Acanoa, a fish appeared in his own community (lines 123-125). The priest who went celebrated mass at the ravine where the fish had arrived, in an effort to make them go away (lines 149-152). The thunder and rains moved the fish and the xili simultaneously: “They took it [the fish] as far as the sea, together with the xili” (lines 174-175). Giving each creature its own role and story within the tale, Don Pedro’s version of the events is a full and balanced rendering.
Whether told as one tale or separately in two accounts, the threats posed by the xili and the snake/fish constitute two of the most genuine perils of the past. Whole villages would have been swept away had the menace not been averted. The potential extermination of the locality is the most fundamental and dramatic of all events that took place recently; its permanence depended on the events’ outcome. The fortunate ending secured Nahua life and is the present-day Nahuas’ raison d’être. As a result, it is worthwhile telling and remembering.
Actors in the tale
The two tales do not deal with exactly the same actors, but some general remarks may be made about their role in both tales. Apart from the water creatures, the tales’ main characters are the villagers, who are confronted with the problem of their locality’s destruction. Their representation as a collective, discussing and solving problems together, is typical in this tale. The villagers have to cope with two adversaries, both water animals who flood the area. They seem to occupy places that do not pertain to them and cause distress in the villages. The water creatures’ specific nature and actions shall be dealt with further on.
Another actor is embodied in the figure of a priest, who plays a crucial role in saving the people. The fact that Don Gregorio and Don Pedro agree that the priest is a bishop gives the tale more cachet, and underlines the gravity of the crisis. Of course, a bishop would not have taken the trouble to go to a place that was so insignificant and far away had it not been utterly necessary. The bishop’s acts also stresses Christianity’s role as an effective power and support during bad times: the villagers manage to survive the calamity through the mass’ celebration and/or the sprinkling of holy water where one of the adversaries lives. This way, the priest offers a solution to the problem posed by both adversaries, and the couple is forced to abandon the area. The secondary actors are the birds and people from other villages who come to watch the spectacle. Don Gregorio says the visitors came from several communities in the municipality (lines 100-103); Don Pedro confirms that
many people arrived from different places (lines 287-292; 312-315). Their role is meant to highlight the extraordinary events which were worth witnessing and telling, by exemplifying the anxiety and curiosity aroused in the whole area. Likewise, the enumeration of different villages registers, again, the focus on locality as one of Huastecan Nahua society’s main nuclei. The thunder and lightning are secondary actors as they are responsible for the water beings’ arrival and departure. The role of these phenomena in narrative and socio-cultural reality is essential for understanding the tale and shall be explained in this chapter.
Time aspects in the tale: temporal setting and story time
In the two texts, the emergence of the xili and the fish/snake is set in the more or less indefinite time of the elders. Don Gregorio’s grandfather is said to have witnessed the events, as did the old man who informed Don Pedro. Besides the qualification of truth conveyed by the elders, their presence at the scene situates the tale in a recent past, in the time when the present-day grandfathers were young.
In this recent past, two events roughly coincide: two creatures appear at about the same time, they co-exist for a while and leave simultaneously. Don Gregorio makes it look as if both creatures appeared the same day (lines 65- 70), and then informs us that the water snake was the first to arrive at the scene, and that the xili accompanied it shortly afterwards (lines 150-155). More than a precise indication of time or of the order of appearance, these statements’ purpose is to specify the temporal coincidence of two water creatures with similar actions. Placing together two separate events in the same temporal setting makes the tale more impressive, for the threat becomes worse and attains not merely a local but a micro-regional character. The scope of the alarming situation has expanded; there are now two creatures to be countered with, and two villages in danger of extinction. The tale’s outset is a true tale in which a serious problem must be faced.
After sketching the initial situation, the events’ time sequence in a true tale is usually indicated by terms such as uajka (at that time), kema (when), nama
(now), uajkino (thus), noponi (then), teipa (next), or uan (and), which show a relative time course. These references do not mark the incident’s real time span nor indicate exactly how much time elapses between the episodes. Above all, they serve as links to further the tale’s desired development, as it is the events’ sequence within the story that it is important to describe and explain. That is, they address a chronological succession of acts whose importance and consequences are more relevant than their duration[188].
When stressing the importance of a particular action within the tale, the narrator may recur to a more precise statement in regard to temporal details. This is shown in the first tale, in a sentence Don Gregorio pronounces right after the customary indefinite time marker san tonili (one morning, at dawn line 51). Here, he suddenly is very precise in the temporal indication: due to the great amount of rain, the next day (tonili) a big water was made, the earth came down, and the people were afraid to die (lines 56-62). The virtual threat of an inundation calls for a narrative device emphasizing the event’s relevance. A precise temporal statement that stands out among a great majority of relative time markers provides the required accentuation. It should be noted, however, that this device only works for experienced storytellers. Many narrators do not trust themselves and are not very outspoken about temporal aspects, because this would give their report a more authoritative outlook. Since the true tales’s contents may be subject to the audience’s criticism, narrators often choose to omit any distinctive and compromising details, such as precise temporal markers. A version concerning a personal eyewitness’ report about one of the water creatures (van ‘t Hooft and Cerda 2003:164-167) is the only case in which several precise time indications are given[189].
Don Pedro recalls the xili arrived first and believes it had already been growing for a while in one of the communities before the fish came and also started to acquire big proportions. He emphasizes the growing process repeatedly, which connotes a lengthy duration. He says the xili “was this small but it grew big, big, big, big” (lines 217-218). The villagers rebuilt the dam they had constructed for the xili twice (lines 222-234); this work must have taken some time. As the crustacean went around, “it became big, like one mapeli it is growing, it is growing” (lines 243-245). At this point in the story, the fish has not even appeared yet. After its arrival, it had to grow big (lines 254-256) before the authorities took action and chased it away. The narrator integrates this arrival with the existence of the first water creature, when saying that “there appeared a xili and here appeared a fish. And then those [people] here and those there became frightened” (lines 265-268). Don Gregorio does not mention any growth process. The length of time in which one of the animals is in the ravine is expressed through a direct time marker: the water snake goes about for a month in the ravine before the bishop arrives (lines 111-114). The narrators’ statements lead to the notion that both animals inhabited the region for a rather indefinite time period. They roamed about for a few weeks or months even and, as in one case, obtained extraordinary dimensions before they were removed. Don Pedro makes use of this time span proposing that the xili’s growth process is a period in which the people gradually became aware of the danger the animal represented to their future existence. The longer this period lasted, the more perilous the situation became.
Following the rains (and, as Don Pedro says, the growth) in which the residents gradually began to recognize the scope of the problem, one of the villages asks a priest’s help. Don Pedro enumerates the actions taken from this point on, in a series of short sentences with verbs related to decision- making and action (“they talked”, “they called a priest”, “he held a mass”, lines 273-286), without ever referring to their duration, which suggests a swift and sensible handling of the situation in which one action follows another. The urgency of the situation called for immediate action. The community reunions in which possible solutions to the problem were discussed, the call of a priest, his subsequent assistance, and the beings’ final disappearance, are occurrences that must have taken some time and effort. Again, the episode’s actual duration is not the main issue; rather, emphasis is placed on the decisive and collective handling of the situation.
Don Gregorio mentions that the priest --or the bishop, in his version-- began to come every month (lines 123-125), and therefore, he refers to a process in which the priest had to bless the earth several times to finally make the water creatures go away. This process implies a time lapse and, correspondingly, a considerable effort, after which the situation comes back to normal. The mention of this rather long unsafe period is strengthened by the fact that the bishop wandered around for such a long time in the Xochiatipan municipality; it is said he died there (lines 126-129). His prolonged efforts accentuate, again, the extraordinary threat presented by the situation. It was not easy to avert the danger, and continuous efforts had to be made to reach a successful outcome.
After the priest’s ultimate blessing, the water creatures went away, the water dried up and the birds that had come “to watch the spectacle” left too (lines 135-143). Don Gregorio says the water snake fled the day after the last blessing, accompanied by lightning and rains (lines 142-148), but does not elaborate on the time lapse of the other events. It might have taken a while for the earth to dry, but Don Gregorio only says it “dried up” (line 135), and does not denote the action’s tempo. Nothing is said about the temporal aspects of the water birds’ departure. Don Pedro does not disclose anything on these matters either. The water might have been drying up little by little during the months in which the bishop came, or it might have disappeared suddenly after the ecclesiastic’s persistence for a whole month had led to a successful outcome. The water birds might have left instantaneously or not. The contrast between the lack of information in this respect and the elaborate time markers referring to the water creature’s departure, discloses the latter event’s importance. The villagers know their plea to God has been successful and that they are safe now.
A narrator can choose to omit words that convey information --concrete or vague-- about the tale’s temporal aspects. This happens either because the events’ precise succession is not considered a necessary element at that point in the story, or because its sequence is obvious to listeners and does not need any further explanation. The vague temporal markers employed in the two tales do not allow the calculation of a precise time span, but neither is this of interest to the narrators or their audience. What both narrators do want is to make sure that the threat’s magnitude is recognized. The events’ prolonged duration (expressed through the act of growing in the case of Don Pedro, and a repeated blessing of the earth in the text of Don Gregorio) contributes to a sense of the situation’s genuine gravity, first as a period of literally increasing danger, then as a period of strenuous combat in order to survive.