For a brief period in the early 19th century, in between the oligarchy of Spain and the oligarchy of Murica, this little scrap of land I inhabit and love was known as the Mexican Estado de Occidente: the “Western State”. <\/p>\n
Although, as Wikipedia dryly points out, “the Yaqui, Pima, Apaches, and other (majority) native inhabitants” of it did not recognize Occidente, or the Mexican’s right to rule them from hundreds of miles south.<\/p>\n
There existed a leader named Juan Banderas, a Yaqui, who was fighting the Mexicans up until 1833, at which time he was captured and summarily executed. In the next decade, America would steal this part of the land out from under the Mexicans, but the native Resistance would continue all century long on both sides of the Rio Grande and the alleged Border, or Frontera. <\/p>\n
We know how it ‘ends’. <\/p>\n
Most modern citizen-residents of Tucson or Las Cruces seem inclined to feel that this is the way it should have ‘ended’, or maybe even that this is the way things have ‘always’ been. Instead of an, er, Occident of History. <\/p>\n
Anyway. I was digging around in the etymology of ‘Occident’ to try and decide what it was worth to me poetically, and I stumbled across this, under Synonyms:<\/p>\n
English
\nBorrowed from Italian ponente (\u201cwest\u201d), ultimately from Latin ponent-, ponens, present participle of ponere (\u201cto place\u201d).
\nponent: The west; the area of the setting sun. <\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd even a quote, seemingly inspired by Milton himself, from a 1974 novel:<\/p>\n
“There was an ambiguity surpassing conjecture in her eyes, and the wind rose up around us in that half barbaric Russian garden with its alien Diana blackened by snows and fierce ponent winds.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So right now, after long years of considering such names as Aztlan and Deseret for my true home country, and having briefly been enamored of Occidente … <\/p>\n
I’m calling her Ponent now. <\/p>\n
And maybe even considering myself a Ponent too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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