#chaneques

References I merged together under the cut

Because of adjusting to a job with ridiculously long hours and just draining energy overall, I've really fallen behind with my art. However, lately I've tried carving a space for it over the weekends so I'm finally finishing pieces I've neglected for far too long.

This one is a bit of a weird one, but bear with me. I set myself the challenge to imitate the black and white art style of Wendy Pini for her Elfquest series from the 70s, but using Chaneques instead of Elves. For those who don't know, Chaneques are fairy/goblin like creatures in Mexican mythology, who are said to have the faces of old men, bowed legs and their feet are on backwards. They are tricksters towards humans but preservers of the natural world, and they feed off of energy (or life force).

The original intention of this challenge to myself was to simplify! I always take too long with my environments, I wanted to imitate a "deceptively" simpler style so I'd go faster . . . the end result was me going "Sure, I can spend 45 minutes to an hour drawing leaves from a tree native to Tepoztlan in the foreground".

Soooo . . . I failed, ha haa.

Los binizá tuvieron la premonición de la llegada de hombres blancos y barbados. Y avisaron a los aztecas que se asombraron como soles en la noche.

Velo, pero las hormigas no salen. los chaneques cabalgan sobre ellas ojillos terribles de luz, chisporroteando garapa, garapa rapa.

Duermo, las hormigas vuelven y los chaneques me olvidan. Mi madre niña espiaba temerosa cuando al corredor de la calle polvorienta -asteroide abandonado- entraban pero las hormigas ya bebían sus piernas y eran la sombra que se abre en la luz de una estrella   muerta.

Xhuncu: si desvelo no puedes dormir te recuerdo lo que ansiosa esperabas de tu infancia diluvial y vas a reencontrar los hombrecitos luminosos levantando polvaredas de la eternidad con sus risas y rondas, con sus rosas lirondas, con sus lindes que rozan el delirio, flotando entre los cedros, desordenando asteroides de la constelación, quebrando espigas cetrinas de la luna, vigas del cielo y tibios nardos de la sombra. ¿Recordarán las hormigas la edad del polvo milenario en que llegaron, no la gota de leche de la noche en que cada una se transparentó. ¿Lo que otras veces sucedió cuando otro como yo robaba -de estrellas fugaces- preguntas a la noche cruzada de relámpagos de tiempo? A través de la ventana del viento que da a una calle clara y larga caído rayo fósil, cauda olvidada de cometa, los tigres de Tezcatlipoca y los sacerdotes binizá miran a los chaneques. En la montaña aúllan brujos monos. Tienen frío.

Nocturna espuma, la hormigas florecían en los talones ¿qué premoniciones se aclaraban como en el ojo de agua donde la danza pule su rostro? ¿Qué es lo que sabían? ¿Por qué todo camina tan quieto como antes de una tempestad?

Zeeda Bendayuse-lá? ¿Viene bramando en el cielo un ganado de culebras?

Xhuncu Huini, al fin duermes. Ellas vuelven sigilosas a tomar de las tazas de barro el líquido que corre en monedas de cacao mueven con sus antenas al vacío, y la luz de la vela se tropieza y muere: otra lengua protestando, manoteando en el silencio. No les importa decirnos lo que saben no les preocupa lo que pasa.

Los diminutos del tiempo inquietan las ramas del viento                             colgándose de ellas con los brillos que ruedan en el agua con los grillos que cantan en la aguja escondida en la fragua marina del pajar.

Son voces maduras de la noche                            a punto caer ¿Recuerdas cuando los nuestros se alejaron con la danza enredada en los tobillos?

Cuando todos duermen soñando que sueño la noche se empieza a levantar en una alta ola que anega a la Vía Láctea. Devora a la tierra un rumor                          ya estrépito de pasos es un nutrido ejército defensor que se aproxima. Garapa, garapa rapa.

– Baádu, nònu guciguiè -Niño, es la estación de agua. –¿Hriaba  bandáagaa guie´nisa là? -¿Se deshojará la flor de agua? –Cayete bi -Está bajando viento. –Ñaá, ma´ uleza bi -Madre, ya esperó el viento. –Caguiaba bandaaga,  ne nisaguié -Se deshoja, está lloviendo. –Ñaá, ¿zeda Cosijoeza, Binni Nanyo’ sti Yi ne sti                                       Belebiáni, shaíque stínu? -Madre, ¿vendrá Cosigoeza, el  Señor del Tiempo                      y del    Rayo, nuestro emperador? –Guùzi, shiiñi gaana, lu bacaanda´ Cacheesa lu guciguié -Duerme, hijo, en el sueño                       que trota en la estación de agua.

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The Binizá had the premonition of the arrival of bearded white men. And they warned the Aztecs, who were amazed as the suns in the night.

I watch awake, but the ants don’t come out. the chaneques ride upon them terrible little eyes of light, crackling

garapa, garapa rapa.

I sleep, the ants return and the chaneques forget me. My mother child spied fearfully when at the corridor of the dusty street -abandoned asteroid- they were coming but the ants were already swallowing her legs and they became the shadow that opens in the light of a dead star.

Xhuncu: if I’m awake you cannot sleep I remind you what you anxiously expected from your diluvian childhood and again you’ll meet the glowing little men raising dusts of eternity with their laughter and rounds, with their roses so fresh, with their edges that touch delirium, floating among the cedars, scrambling asteroids of the constellation, snapping citrine stems from the moon, the beams that hold the sky, and warm spikenards of shadow. Will the ants remember the age of ancient dust in which they came, and not the drop of night’s milk in which each became transparent? What happened other times when someone else like me stole questions from shooting stars at night crossed by lightning bolts of time?

Through the window that looks upon a street clear and long fallen fossil lightning rod, forgotten comet tail, the tigers of Tezcatlipoca and the Binizá priests look at the chaneques. On the mountain monkey-shamans howl. They are cold.

A nocturnal foam, the ants consumed the heels What premonitions were divined, as at the spring where the dance lathers its face? What did they know? Why does everything walk so quietly

as before a storm?

Zeeda Bendayuse-lá? Does a herd of snakes come roaring in the sky?

Xhunxu Huini, at last you sleep. They stealthily return to drink from mugs of clay the liquid that runs in coins of cacao, they move the void with their antennae, and the light of the candle trips and dies: another language protesting, striking in the silence. They don’t care to tell us what they know they don’t care what is happening.

The little ones of time disturb the branches of the wind hanging from them with the lights that roll on the water with the crickets that sing in the needle hidden in the hayloft’s sea forge. They are ripe voices of the night ready to fall Do you remember when our people went away with the dance entangled round their ankles?

When all are sleeping, dreaming that I dream the night begins to rise in a tall wave that floods the Milky Way. A rumor devours the earth already a clattering of steps it is a large defensive army that approaches.

Garapa, garapa rapa.

-Son, it is the rainy season. -Will it take the water lily’s petals? -The wind is coming down. -Mother, the wind has been waiting. -It defoliates, it rains. -Mother, will our lord Cosijoeza come, the lord of time and thunderbolt, our emperor? -Sleep, son, in the dream that trots through the rainy season.

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Chaneques (Cancion De Cuna)

Víctor Toledo  (B.1957)

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I’ve got a story for this one. Im mexican, my grandad has a fish hatchery ranch up in rural Veracruz, by a little village called Jamapa, which is surrounded on all parts by farmland and tropical woods. When I was 9, my mom shipped me off to grampas ranch so I would learn the virtue of hard work, how money is earned or so l’d value what I have and so on, so I spent the summer there learning to fish, to hunt with a rifle, how to do farm stuff, building immunity to tetanus, surviving dengue, the works.

Well, late in the summer my gramps started noticing his chickens were getting killed and dragged away from their pens by some animal, of course we cant have that, gramps says whatever it is we’re gonna kill it and then eat it (use every part of the animal folks). So he gathered my uncles and cousins and by the crack of dawn, everyone was armed with machetes and rifles and we were on the lookout for whatever critters out there. We’re patrolling the farm and the woods nearby, looking for tunnels in the dirt. So then my cousin comes running to us with this shaking potato sack with little gremlin-like (as in the movie) sounds coming from it, and he holds the bag open enough to see this little naked man baring some damn sharp teeth, a goddam duende, apperantly my cousin caught that thing in the chicken pen. My gramps yells at it “maldito chaneque ya te la armastes”, and bam! Machetazo.

Gramps chopped up this humanoid looking thing, it had arms and legs like ours, clawed hands and feet, a bearded monkey-like face, and he made pozole with the meat. Everyone ate it, I couldnt really bare to do it, it just didnt seem right. The week after that, I boarded the bus for my hometown, my gramps packed all these things to bring home, bags full of fruits, some eggs and some fish. And lastly he gave me a bag with some meat from the little man, with some of its arms sticking out. And gramps told me, “tell your mom to make a good adobo with this son”. I threw away that bag on the first bus stop.

Being a 9yo kid I just accepted it, like I didnt make a big deal out of it because everyone just treated it as a natural thing, like we killed and ate some critter, and I thought that it was a common thing that people knew about. Well, it damn stunned me then when I was told in my teens that those things are a myth, like not real. “Oh duendes? Yeah I just couldnt bare to eat those. Why are you looking at me like that?” No one believe me when I told this story. Like why would I make this up? To make a further ass of myself? And I then told myself that it was all some kind of fever dream I had, up until I asked my grampa about it and he told me, in spanish btw, “ah I remember that duende, very delicious. How did that adobo turn out mijo?”