Adam W. Coon
This paper focuses on the current generational differences apparent in Natalio Hernández Xocoyotzin’s Semanca Huitzilin (2005) and Gustavo Zapoteco Sideño’s Cuicatl pan tlalliouatlmej (2004). Hernández emphasizes in his poetry, though by no means categorically, the value of Nahua cultural identity and history, whereas in Zapoteco’s text Nahua identity is secondary to denouncing social and economic inequality in the sugar cane fields of Morelos. This contrast between Hernández’s generation of writers and Zapoteco’s later generation can be seen in the majority of Nahuatl texts from the last decade. I argue that these distinct foci complement one another in challenging and rewriting neoliberal rhetoric of Mexican national discourse and the official history that obscures indigenous presence in the present.