Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God (Hardcover)

by Neil Baldwin (Author) "According to my handy guidebook, this was supposed to be The Temple of the Old Woman..." (more)
Key Phrases: plumed serpent, quetzal bird, fifth sun, Mexico City, New Spain, Chichén Itzá (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"He was the wind, he was the guide, the roadsweeper of the rain gods, of the masters of water, of those who brought rain."

So wrote the Spanish priest Bernardo de Sahagún of the pale-skinned Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who, Mexican mythology had it, left his homeland but promised his people that he would one day return to them from the eastern sea. Neil Baldwin, the author of biographies of Thomas Edison and Man Ray, offers an intriguing life of the god--a biography, that is, of Quetzalcoatl as viewed by the Mexican people before and after the European conquest. In doing so, he captures the feel of the Mexican places in which Quetzalcoatl held sway: the temples and pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great fortresses of Mitla and Monte Albán, the ball courts of Chichén Itzá. He also provides a convincing portrait of Aztec and other ancient Mesoamerican lifeways, inviting his readers to share the "fear and terror" those people felt when they entered the god's sacred precincts. Baldwin's sympathetic readings of indigenous texts, coupled with his easy style, make Legends of the Plumed Serpent a fine introduction to ancient Mexico; his account of the god's fortunes after the arrival of the Europeans will also be of interest to students of comparative mythology and religion. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
Baldwin, acclaimed biographer of Edison, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams, jettisoned his "resolutely Eurocentric" outlook 10 years ago, when he first visited Mexico. Mingling travelogue, history and a profound meditation on the clash between Mesoamerican and European settler civilizations, his magnificently illustrated new book is a stunning feat of cross-cultural understanding. At its heart lies the myth of the Plumed Serpent, or Quetzalcoatl?central to the Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec and nearly every other formative Mexican culture?whose temples, sculptures, sacred hymns, poems, rituals and legends celebrated this feathered god as a redemptive hero, bestower of civilization. Criss-crossing cultures and landscapes, Baldwin charts the Plumed Serpent's metamorphosis as a unifying symbol for the ancient Mexican diaspora, as a rallying point for militant resistance to Spanish colonizers and as touchstone in the struggle to construct a creole identity under Spanish rule. Symbol of hope and renewal, Quetzalcoatl was reimagined by 1920s humanist essayists and philosophers like Alfonso Reyes and Martin Luis Guzman, by followers of revolutionary martyr Emiliano Zapata, by obsessed novelist D.H. Lawrence, muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, modernist painter Rufino Tamayo and by a new generation of contemporary Mexican artists. Besides exploring all these developments with empathy and insight, Baldwin includes a riveting, dramatic account of Hernan Cortes's conquest of Aztec ruler Moctezuma and its devastating aftermath. He also devotes a jolting chapter to "the Indian problem," which is how Mexico's federalist rulers looked upon the native peoples who throughout the 19th century made up more than 60% of the population, a harshly exploited, silent majority. Breathtakingly illustrated with 100 color photographs, engravings, codices and paintings, Baldwin's narrative is both an engaging personal odyssey and a bold reclamation of a cultural landscape.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 205 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620037
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620034
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,032,633 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accessible knowledge that opens the horizons, January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This is a fascinating book which tells you in the most pleasurable way the history of Mexico and how one enduring symbol, the plumed serpent, connects ancient Mexico with modern Mexico. Great illustrations matched by a restrained text makes this a delight to read.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars probably good, March 21, 2005

By	tezcatlipoca "nahuat'l war god" (quintana roo) - See all my reviews

this is a response to the garulous 'not good' review above.
actually quetzalcoatl breaks down into two nahuat'l words;quetzal for the beautiful iridescent emerald feathered bird of the exact same name,and coatl which means snake or serpent.
a literal translation would be no other then the obvious bird-snake.I don't think any one would seriously be insulted by the aproximation given in the title,inasmuch as it is the de facto english language denomination of said mexica entitiy.
btw:mexicas never thought of themselves as 'aztecs',which it's an posterior and sort of foreign,also intentionaly misleading name,but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of paper!, August 7, 2006

By	Mario E. Aguilar "Cuauhtlehcoc" (San Diego) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book simply re-hashes what other eurocentric writers have written over the past 400 years. It is full of inaccuracies and re-enforces stereotypes that hinder a deeper knowledge of the Quetzalcoatl phenomenon.

For Example, there is no mention that the often quoted claim that Quezalcoatl was a white man, dates only to the 1770's in Creole Mexico.

The "criollos" White Europeans that had the bad luck of being born on the American continent were considered less intelligent by the "peninsulares" or those actually born on the Spanish mainland. So the creoles began to create a "Mexican" national identity that boasted of the cultural heritage of the precolumbians (ironically, the ones that they had sought to exterminate 200 years earlier!) Instead of having Saint James (Sanitago or San Diego) come from Israel to Spain, they created the myth that Saint Thomas came to Mexico where he was considered a god... a white god.

The creation of a white Quetzalcoatl, and the parallel creation of the Guadalupe cult (that mirrored the original Guadalupe story in Estremadurra Spain), were meant to give the creoles equal status in the eyes of God (and thus make them equal to the Peninsulares). Never mid that this ideology did not include the indigenous, mestizo, and African slave communities that made up the vast majority of Mexicans, then as they do today.

This is why I consider this book a waste of paper.