Anglo and Latina
By Samuel Cohen

The day of the landing of Cortez:
Napotl sat on the shore of the great ocean. She had in her hand a carving. With her was her younger sister.
"Tell me again the story of Quetzalcoatl-the god of the oppressed," the child begged.
"The evil spirits made him look in a mirror and showed him that he had a human face and he saw that if he hada human face he must have a human destiny," she said for the tenth time that day. "I have given Quetzalcoatl-the god of the oppressed a female face. Now we must cast it into the sea for my dreams tell me that our people's day will not be much longer. I was told that a woman who is one of the people of our conqueror's conquerer will find it and recognize it."
She now threw it into the sea just as the boats appeared on the horizon.
"Come," she said. "We must go before they get here."

Present Day Cancune:
Jane and Daria were standing on the Florida Beach.
"Why did we agree to take your sister along?," Jane was asking.
"My mother has her ways of coercion", Daria replied.
"This sun will ruin my skin," Quinn was yelling more to nobody in particular although several people were within earshot.
"Let's go swim," Daria said.
They just had jumped in the water.
"AAH!!!," Daria yelled.
"What is it? Too much sun?" asked Jane.
"No, look!!!"
Daria was holding up an obsidian statue of herself in a type of Indian regalia and a plum draping down in the middle of her forehead.
"What the ----?" cried Jane.
"Let's take it in the hotel room get it cleaned off," Jane felt faint, almost lost consciousness and regained it.

The two girls talked in whispered tones.
"We tell no one about this," Daria was saying.
"Oh, I agree," Jane replied.
The two girls now felt rather tired, which on a normal day would have been unusual to them since they had slept till ten.
"I'm tired," Jane thought out loud as Daria echoed the sentiment.
Within five minutes they were dosing. Both saw the Mexican girl appear. Jane saw it as one sees an image in a dream where there is a tremendous adrenaline surge and the person does not wish to go further into unconsciousness. Daria, in contrast, was calm.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I am the spirit of La Raza," she said and beckoned for Daria to follow though she knew not where she went.
The girl's attire changed from Aztec tribal regalia to jeans and an Espirit shirt.
"I am the spirit of my people. I appeared as the Virgin of Guadalupe years ago to unite both bloods of the Latin people. I plunged the sacrificial knife into my own heart as Tenochtitlan fell. You are the hope of your people to lead them against the brainless cheerleading squads and teen magazine literature. You will be immortalized as a constellation when you die so a thousand years from now an outcast will offer a prayer of hope to your celestial image but operate no win the physical realm."
They walked without limitation of time and space in the warm air of the Mojave desert Indian/Latino and white skinned Anglo not knowing if they were there a second or a hundred years that had passed. Tears trickled down the faces of both women.
"Now go," Napolt said, and her fading voice was the last thing that Daria heard as she woke up.
"Did you dream what I dreamed?," Jane asked.
"It wasn't a dream," Daria replied. "A new day has dawned," she said as she got up appearing confident and steadfast.

THE END

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