Popocatépetl's Reverie (El Ensueño de Popocatépetl)

This bilingual edition of Popocatépetl's Reverie: The Paradox of War is a provocative allegorical tale written for English and Spanish readers, masterfully illustrated by José Luis Pescador, one of Mexico's outstanding visual artists and interpreters of Aztec culture, and skillfully translated by Rodrigo Álvarez Hernández, who provides readers a useful glossary of key Mesoamerican terms. This attractive bilingual edition has been innovatively designed by Salvador Martínez.

In this tale, we are transported into a pre-Hispanic world defined by war and militarism. The mythic Popocatépetl is portrayed as a young, elite, jaguar warrior mandated to postpone his intended marriage to Iztaccíhuatl by the governing priesthood of the Mexicas. Courageous and dutiful, he complies and leads a military expedition to the Oaxacan provinces in order to suppress the rebellious Zapotecs and capture their warriors as customary for human sacrifices intended to appease Tlaloc, the God of Rain.

Popocatépetl will never fully abandon his suspicion of the belligerent strategies of the autocratic priests. Indeed, the Mexicas's best laid plans go awry when the obstinate rebels do not comply with their accepted rules of war, stubbornly refusing to be captured. The Zapotec rebels valiantly fight to their death, and Popocatépetl's expected victory on the battlefield is finally reduced to an inglorious slaughter. An unexpected rainfall follows the travesty on the battlefield, and Popocatépetl's Reverie becomes a tragic story of cosmic irony.

The great military strategist Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, who experienced first hand the Napoleonic Wars, would have readily understood how Popocatépetl's Reverie illustrates more broadly the paradoxical futility of war, which can easily be steered off its course when subverted by the unexpected or by the chance event. One never knows what will actually happen when one goes to war, however powerful or calculating one is. Thus, there is no predictable endgame to war.

Interested readers, if they have not already, might familiarize themselves with the Nahua origin myth personifying Mexico's twin volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, which exists in several popular versions. This fantastic and touching love story explains how the twin volcanoes, which are today visible from atop the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico City, came to be.

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En esta cuenta alegórica dirigida a un público hispanoparlante y angloparlante, El Ensueño de Popocatépetl, la pluma de Rubén Quintero se esgrime desde la ficción, y nos transporta al México prehispánico para explorar los fenómenos de la guerra y el militarismo a través de la historia de Popocatépetl. El cuento sigue a este jóven guerrero de élite, cuyo matrimonio se ve pospuesto por su obligación de emprender una expedición militar a territorios zapotecos pero jamás termina de fiarse del todo de las intenciones belicosas de los sacerdotes aztecas. Es una narrativa que es a la vez estética y potente, el autor nos refleja la dura experiencia de vida de los sobrevivientes de guerra, esa que es universal a todas las épocas y culturas donde se han desatado estos trágicos fenómenos.