Macario Matus (Zapoteca People, Mexico)
Por:
Macario Matus
Traductor:
M. Epifanía Matus O
The Zapotecs
All darkness were
when Zapotecs
rushed out from the older trees,
like ceiba,
from the wild beast belly they were born,
as the tiger, the lizard.
Macario Matus was born in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, México on January 2, 1943. Poet, narrator, essayist, translator and journalist. He collaborates in the newspapers Excélsior and Unomásuno. Author of the poetry book Los zapotecas (binni záa), recently published by the collection Contemporary Indigenous Letters from The General Direction of Popular Cultures of CONACULTA, in his verses he highlights the existent relation between man and nature as well as the vision towards the cosmos characteristic of the pre-hispanic people and the great cultures that have upsurged in the history of the world, in Spanish and Zapoteco. Particularly he expresses "the genesis, struggle, life and death that contain the first ages of the existence root. In the time we are living -we the zapoteca people- we still believe that we come from the roots of the trees and the earth's entrails. It`s an ancient, magical and fantastic thought that at the moment of being expressed in literature can question what is happening. We couldn't make ourselves to get known in this way. Now we know how to read and write, many of us are writers and poets in a natural manner, we possess these instruments, the opportunity is there now.
