ABSTRACT
While growing up in México City, I didn’t know a lot about my pre-Columbian heritage, though I lived in Tenochtitlán—the capital of the Aztec empire—and was literally immersed in that heritage. I recall that one of my childhood hobbies was to collect pictures of Aztec warriors and other Mexican heroes like the Aztec king Cuauhtémoc, who was captured and tortured by the Spaniards. I should add that none of these heroes were Spanish. My brothers and I would go to a little store in our neighborhood near el árbol de la noche triste on avenida México-Tacuba and buy candy. Each package of candy contained a picture card of a Mexican historical figure that we would paste into an album, or scrapbook. Since the pictures would repeat themselves in the candy packages, we would trade them with other kids in order to collect a variety. It was kind of like a baseball card collection because some of the cards were rare and more valuable than others. The goal, of course, was to complete El Album, a pictorial history of México. I collected these books without fully understanding that I was living in the Aztec capital and honoring my pre-Columbian heritage.
