Amerrique: the Land-where-the-wind-blows: recovering the native toponyms

Amerrique, from which the word America is derived, is an indigenous Mayan / Lenca voice that means "the Land-where-the-wind-blows. Additionally Vespucio was not called Américo but Albérico.
Background
According to Jules Marcou, a French geographer who investigated the issue at the end of the 19th century, the word Amerrique designates the mountain range that separates Lake Nicaragua from the humid plain of the Caribbean coast. Marcou was based on A. Le Plongeon, a scholar specializing in Mayan and Central American cultures, who claimed that the word Amerrique was of Mayan origin and meant "the land where the wind blows." In the Mayan dialects, the iqqe, ik and ika endings mean, not only "wind" but also "air", "the spirit that breathes" and "life". Therefore, Amerrique may mean "the land where the wind blows," "the place of the spirit who breathes" and even "the living land." Alfonso Valle reached similar conclusions. Dávila Bolaños, on the other hand, maintains that the name comes from Amac-rique (long mountain range). It should be noted that the Sierra de Amerrique is designated as such in numerous maps, (for example in the Atlas of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the Larousse dictionary and others), as well as in some works and bibliographical references

A reference from the president of Nicaragua
In 1886, in a letter sent to Don Manuel Peralta and referred by Jules Marcou, the President of Nicaragua, Don Adan Cárdenas claimed that the Amerrique mountain range was inhabited by "an Indian tribe known as the Amerriques, today reduced to a small number of individuals "but that" in ancient times "this nation was" of some importance. " Cárdenas also pointed out that "these Amerrique Indians have been communicating more or less frequently with the Cape Gracias a Dios and the entire Misquita Coast."

The first mention of America related to Vespucci
The name America, explicitly awarded as a tribute to Vespucci, appears for the first time in a publication entitled "Cosmographiae Introductio", printed in 1507 at the Gymnase Vosgien in the city of Saint Dié, together with the Latin translation of the famous letters of Vespucci identified as "Quatour Americi Navegationes". The Gymnase Vosgien, a school and printing press located in a small town in French Lorraine, published documents about the "new lands" uncovered beyond the ocean. One of these publications was the aforementioned. We also remember that Saint Dié is located in one of the oldest areas of imporist tradition in Europe (a short distance from the city of Strasbourg where Johann Gutenberg had developed the first printing press in 1439, just 70 years before). The work was attributed to Martín Hylacomylus Waldseemüller (the name is also written as Ilacomylus and Waltzemüller). In the type-graphic brand of the Waldseemüller printing press it appears as M.I. (Martin Ilacomylus). According to Jules Marcou, Waldseemüller's position was as a cartoonist-cartographer, while intellectual authorship should be awarded to Jean Basin, who had also translated Vespucci's letters into Latin. The name America is cited in the said article, indicating that its use is made as a homage to Américo Vespucci.

The pseudonym of Don Albérico Vespucci
The above information seems to show that the name America does not come from Albérico Vespucci. It was also pointed out that the names Amerigo or Americo were rarely common in Florence, since they were not included in the Christian saint that was the source of all the first names used in the Italian republics of that time. Marcou's hypothesis, which seems very logical, is that Amerigo or Américo were actually pseudonyms that Don Albérico had adopted (belatedly, already in Castile) to adjust his name to the successful denomination of the former continent.
(continues)
From the book "The Lie of the Millennium" (The Mysteries of America), D. Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones.

Amerrique: orphans of paradise
From the introduction to the book Amerrique, Orphans of Paradise
Listen to the clamor 

Namandu, True Father, the First
Around our few fires
We, very few orphans of your paradise
We encourage each other
To continue living in this Earth, your Home.(1) 
On October 12, 1492, a new cycle started that changed the history of the world. Some  expansionist European nations invaded the American continent taking over territories, wealth and people.
This invasion was followed by a complex and systematic operation of elimination of peoples, environments and cultures. It was an extermination of a magnitude never seen.  Millions were enslaved or died, the forests were burned or logged, many animal species extinguished, the water poisoned, the Earth attacked without mercy.
We are at the gateway of the third millenium. More than 500 years have elapsed after that day. Still today, degradation, looting and genocide continue. Mother Earth is in agony facing the aggresion that does not cease. The few surviving groups wonder without direction, subjected to robberies, disrespect and servitude
Their rights are being still allienated. Although a Universal Chart of Human Rights has been approved, its rules are not applied to protect the rights of the First Nations of the American continent.
The native inhabitants are not real subjects of law.
They are only Indians.

Great Powers, listen to me
The people is destroyed and scattered
Let the wind blend the seeds
To grow again, strongly, in a beautiful new place (2)
Hundreds of nations, which occupied vast expanses of territory and used nature respectfully and effectively were slaughtered, disappeared, destroyed.
The survivors of the Great Massacre are hiding in remote locations or disguise their condition throughout the land.
They are not allowed the right to preserve their identities, they are invaded by new missionaries of various religious and sects, loaded with messages of alienation propagated with copious resources.
In the criollo societies they are depreciated, their right to self-government is denied, even at the strictly local level. Their languages are underrated, their ceremonies are ridiculed, they are forced to change their ways of life, their productive systems, their social practices, their clothes, their names. Among the thousand nations that existed in America in the fifteenth century, very few have survived. They are still threatened by impending extinction. The genocide continues.

I was born in vain
In vain I exited from the House of Tlalteotl
The Lord of the Earth
Naked and poor
I am unfortunate!
Better not to be born
Nor arrived to the Earth (3)
When the old cultures disappear their systems of relationing with nature are gone with them. Lost is their profound respect for the plants, for the animals, for the rocky hills...
The spirits that take care of the nature’s elements, the caa iya, the qwani, the curupi, the guardians of the forest, the salamancas  than watch the waters, the nuke-mapu who look after the Earth and its beings... they have been forgotten, underestimated, characterized as superstitions of primitive people.
In the meanwhile, logging continues, fires extend down to the last corners of the land, the rivers are loaded with sediments and poison, the air has become toxic to breath and even the solar radiation has become hazardous.
These blunders are the result of a style of using the land that is immoral and harmful.
Who are the barbarians, the primitive people?

Peace... gets into the souls of human beings when they realize their unique essence, with the Universe and all their powers, when they understand that in the centre of the Universe there is Wakan-Tanka and that this centre is in reality everywhere, within each one of us. (4)
Today we can barely understand to what extent we are affected and lost. The creole states are well established, globally legitimated. Nobody dares to dispute their sovereignty.
The contemporary  American nations are the inheritors of that history of plunder and depredation. Spain, Portugal, England, France and Holland invaded other peoples’ lands and established systems based on this legacy of violence.
They introduced the property of the land, but they did not allow it to the native peoples who were in that land from immemorial times. Instead they dedicated their energies to distribute the territory among themselves, displacing the legitimate inhabitants or simply forcing them to remain as slave labor in the new encomiendas, plantations, haciendas and mines. The rights of the land owners in America are based on this fraudulent origin.
When the Europeans arrived, the people of the native American nations enjoyed their individual freedom in a manner completely unknown beyond the ocean. In a few decades, the foreign domination was going to finish with it.

We are born free brothers and united, each one is as Lord as the other, while you are all serfs of one man. I am the master of my body, I dispose of myself, I do as I wish, I am the first and the last of my nation.... subject only to the Great Spirit. 
In many sites of America there are communities that are inheritors of the ancient cultures.(5)
In the coldest zones of the continent, illuminated by the Northern Lights; in the arid deserts, in communion with the Forefather of the Land; in the slopes of the volcanos, sustaining an existencial dialogue with the inner dimensions of the planet; in the tropical forests, recreating visions of light; and in the Southern Forests, building stairs to upper levels of wisdom .
For us, Americans of today, who grew up without knowing many things, is time of learning.
Little by little, we will be able to recuperate the forgotten knowledge.
And when we know it, share it with others.
For everybody to know that this continent, America, ancient Amerrique, possesses histories of dignity, rich and profound.
History that is nurtured in the heart of the brothers that were witnesses of the Old Times of Paradise.
They feel alone.
Those, who, have, as once Artigas  said, the principal right.
This book wants to invite you all, to accompany them.

1  Reproduced from “El Canto Resplandeciente”  M’bya Guarani prayers, from Ramos, Lorenzo and others, p. 28.

2 Song that Small Wolf sang when his Cheyenne community decided to come back to the ancestral land from the reservation where they had been confined in 1878 (quoted from the book “Cheyenne Autumn”, of Mary Sandoz)

3 Poem to shortness of life, Canto XXXVI, Los Cantos de Nezahualcóyotl.

4 Black Elk, quoted by Joseph Epes Brown. Ref. Ed McGaa, Eagle Man in the Rainbow Tree, p.161.

5 Comments that a Huron made to Baron de Lahontan, ref. J.Weatherford, Indian Givers, p. 123.  
Reproduced from the book Amerrique, Orphans of Paradise, Danilo Anton, Piriguazú Ediciones

The Sierra of Amerrique

In their eagerness to devalue the American native nations, the invaders and their Creole intellectual continuators endeavored to take away the original indigenous names. This was done through a systematic conspiracy of "illustrious" writers who devoted thousands of pages to show that not even the word America is native American. The inhabitants of America are so insignificant that they do not deserve to their own name!

According to these versions, which have been imposed almost unanimously in the so-called universal culture, the name America would come from a Florentine geographer whose name was precisely "Américo" Vespucci. In this way, he officially became the inspiration for the American denomination. We think that this is not true. We believe that the denomination of continent is of native origin and that the known first name of Mr. Vespucci was not Americo but Albérico.

In the following pages we will try to present the foundations of these affirmations. We hope that in that way we can help to draw back the curtain that has hidden the truth for so long. Behind this occultation the ancient name America appears, inspired in the old Sierra de Amerrique, and with it, Huzgalpa, the land of gold and many other roots that will come out of the dungeons of official history reapplearing in the least expected horizons.

The name was taken by the European explorers. As we expressed previously, there are indications that the name Amerrique was picked up by several European explorers when disembarking in the Central American coasts from the zone of Veragua, in the present republic of Panama, to the coast of the Misquitos in the territories of Nicaragua and Honduras. The expedition of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, in which Albérico Vespucci participated in 1497 and 1498, descript in a letter (the second letter) by the latter, was put in doubt by some authors. The knowledge of the insular character of Cuba, which is expressed in the map of Juan de la Cosa in the year 1500, and several other indications, tend to confirm the effective occurrence of this route. During the expedition, the expedition visited the Central American coasts, probably continuing to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. Four or five years later, Christopher Columbus himself, on his fourth trip, would also gather a wealth of information about the riches of the area, including, almost certainly, the name of Amerrique. Then, by those things of destiny, the denomination happened to be used to designate a part of Central America and soon to the whole of the American continent.

Chapter 2

Tempests, Gods and Devils

Translated from "La Mentira del Milenio", D.Anton, Piriguazú Ediciones

The invaders came from the East. They arrived in large ships and occupied the Taino, Carib, Ciboney and Guanatabey Islands. They seized lands and peoples. From the summits of her mountains, Amerrique witnessed  their arrival

“Eighty-eight days had passed and the terrible storm had not left us. I did not see the sun or the stars....my vessels were taking water....the sails torn...people very ill... frequently confessing one another...”   Then   “The storm came back... for nine days I was lost without hope. Never had eyes beheld the sea so high, ugly and foamy...  I paused on that sea turned to blood, boiling like a cauldron over a great fire. Never had the sky been so awful. One day the night burned like an oven and threw flames of lightning ... so furious and frightening that all believed the vessels would be melted...”  and the fatigue was so great  “... that in some the heretical idea took hold  that we were under a spell”

“I am lost.... Isolated in this sorrow, ill, awaiting death every day and surrounded by a million savages, full of cruelty, and our enemies. I do not have a single hair that has not turned grey and my body is sick and worn out.... weep for me whomsoever feels charity, truth and justice.”

Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean-Sea had arrived in Amerrique, the “Land-Where-the-Wind-Blows”.

Amerrique was not only the land of the wind, she was also the Rich Coast, the Costa Rica, or as they say in a local native tongue: Huzgalpa or Huigalpa, the Country of Gold.

Columbus, Vespucci and other Europeans who arrived at her shores were attracted by the shining metal, the abundant gold, originating in the many mines o the interior.

The Admiral himself would say in his Diary of the Fourth Trip:

“The gold is excellent, treasures are made from it,  whomsoever has it can do as he pleases in the world and can send souls to Paradise”.

In this way, a few years after arriving in the country of the Lucayos and the Haiti, the Spaniards went to the Gold Coast and beyond, to the source of the gold, well into the mountains, the ancestral lands of the Amerrique Nation.

The Amerrique people do not exist anymore, the Amerrique mountains today are known as the Cordillera Chontaleña and the gold mines have Spanish names: Santo Domingo and La Libertad.

However, on the tops of Mounts Mombachito and Cuizaltepe, in the middle of the Amerrican Range, the strong cleansing wind persists in blowing and remembering.

Where Are They?

Before it was named  Nicaragua by the mestizos and Cocibolca by the Chorotegas, the great-craddle-lake was known as Ukurikitucara to the ancient people of the land.

Ukurikitucara receives the wind-of-life and her golden sparks from the neighboring highlands of Amerrique. She speaks loudly through her crater mouths in Ometepe and stretches her arms to reach Cariari and Amerisco, beyond the mountains, by the sea.

The riches of the water are protected by one thousand and one sharks with pointed teeth and shiny tails.

Night and day, the spirit of Ukurikitucara, sister of hurricanes lives.

Although many people think that she has no memory, in fact, she remembers every single image mirrored on the waters.

Most specially, she remembers them. The ancient people. The ones who came to her shores with feelings of love and respect, bringing fruit, corn and tobacco.

She knows all too well that one day, very soon, they will return from the fog of time, the sacred idols will stand once more, and the wide, clean sky will again be their temple.

They say that the Amerriques are gone.  That they have disappeared.

However, if you walk attentively throughout the hills and valleys of Amerrique, you can feel it. The Amerriques are still there. In fact, they are everywhere. In the silent rocks. In the steep slopes. In the legendary cliffs. In the hearts of the people of Juigalpa and La Libertad. In all of us if we want to find them.

Some people call them Matagalpans, others Chontales. In fact, there is no difference. The wise people who carved the idols do not need a new name. They have their very old, unique ways of naming themselves. It is just that we still have not found  them out. Maybe we are just beginning to understand. Perhaps, their name is the one we use everyday without even realizing it: America.

 The Devil Has Arrived

The devil has arrived. There is no doubt about it. The news spread throughout the land. The Devil with a pale face and clothes of iron. Those who thought that they were the kind Gods were mistaken. They are really demons who worship those metals that grow in the depth of the Earth. It is rumored that they feed on silver and gold, that they change their iron skin every year and that they do not know what love and tenderness are.

In the entrails of the Andean Plateau, untouched by sunlight and cool breezes, at the bottom of the galleries where silver and tin are extracted, the Quechua and Aymara miners prepare their offerings for the Uncle-Devil, “El Tío Diablo” and for his wife China Supay.

The “Uncle” prefers coca leaves, tobacco and chicha. China Supay likes sugar cane. The Devil and his spouse control the world of metals, from where money comes. That is why everybody knows that “Money is the Devil’s business”. Money is not obtained through work, love or companionship. It is acquired by means of a blood pact with the Devil, the k’araku, a golden contract with the “Uncle”, made only for money.

The Spaniards who conquered this land obtained their fortune in that way. For this reason, they were able to kill hundreds of thousands with impunity and become rich. Pizarro promised to respect Atahualpa’s life but he did not hesitate to kill him. As a reward for his crime he inherited the riches of the Inca Empire. Today the drugdealers who profit by trafficking in human suffering make millions of dollars from the cocaine trade.

The miners who have learned these truths in their own lives, risk cave ins and silicosis, work very hard and produce plenty of metal. In spite of that, they earn very little money, they do not have enough to eat, and no fuel to warm them during the cold Altiplano nights. In the meantime, those who live far away and have never worked in the mines, enjoy the luxurious lifestyles of millionaires.

These inequalities can only be explained through sorcery and sacrifices to the Devil. This is why the “gringos” have so much money. No doubt about it. There is no other logical explanation. These people have obtained the favor of Tio and China Supay.

They Did Not Bring God, But the Devil

The demon of miners has horns like a goat, blood colored eyes, mule ears, two black tusks, and daggers instead of teeth reflecting the very faint light of the galleries. Like the European kings, he has a crown with a twisted poisonous snake wrapped around it. The nations of the Andean plateau have learned their lesson. More than four centuries of oppression and suffering have taught it to them. The conquistadores did not bring God but the Devil. From Oruro to Potosi, the ancient peoples of the mountain and the plateau regularly carry out their diabladas. They don’t forget him in their offerings and rituals.

Outside the mines, in the open air, where the wind blows and the rain and the snow fall, it is Pachamama, the spirit of the Mother Earth, who reigns.

With the help of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, Pachamama allows plants to bloom, crops to ripen and babies to be born.  Pachamama is kind. She has nothing to do with money. Pachamama is Amerrique.

Message from Mancu Inca Yupanquyi

Brothers and sons, I have called you together here over the past few days so that you may see the new kind of people who have come to our country, those bearded ones who are here in this city. Because they told me they were Wiracochas and appeared to be so from their dress, I commanded you to serve and obey them as you would serve my own person... thinking that they were worthy people sent from afar, as they themselves claimed, by Tiqsi Wiraqochan, which is to say by God. But it is clear to me that everything has turned out the very opposite of what I expected, because- know this, my brothers- these people have repeatedly shown since entering my country that they are not the children of Wiracocha but of the devil.[1]

The Cheap Souls of Maranhão

Jesuit Father Antonio Vieira arrived in Maranhão, Brazil, in 1652. His life had been a constant struggle for the freedom of slaves and racial and religious tolerance. Besides the Portuguese tongue, Father Antonio spoke native Tupi, African Kimbundu and several indigenous Amazonian languages. In Maranhão he found a desolate panorama of  native slave exploitation. He did not hesitate to confront the planters and traffickers, reminding them of the Christian principles they claimed to profess.

“At what a different price the devil today buys souls compared to what he offered for them previously!  There is no market in the world where he can get them cheaper than right here in our own land. In the Gospel, he offered all the kingdoms of the world for one soul; in Maranhão the devil does not offer even one-tenth  as much for all the souls. It is not necessary to offer worlds, or kingdoms; it is not necessary to offer cities, towns or villages. All he has to do is offer a couple of Tapuya Indians and he is immediately adored on both knees. What a cheap market! An Indian for a soul! That Indian will be your slave for the few days that he lives but your soul will be a slave for eternity, for as long as God is God. This is the contract that the devil makes with you. Not only do you accept it but you pay him money. Christians, nobles, and people of Maranhão, do you know what God wants of you during Lent?  That you break the chains of injustice and free  the captive and oppressed. These are the sins of Maranhão. This is what God told me to denounce. Christians, God ordered me to explain these matters to you and so I will.  All of you are in mortal sin; all of you live in a state of condemnation; and all of you will go directly to Hell. Indeed, there are many there already and you you will soon join them if you do not change your lives.

“Any man who deprives another of liberty and, being able to restore it, does not do so, is condemned. All or nearly all  are therefore condemned. You will say to me that, even if this was true, you did not think or know about it, and so your good faith will save you. I deny that. You did think and  know about it just as you think and know about it now and if you did not think or know about it, you ought to have done so. Some are condemned by their knowledge, others for their doubt, and still others for their ignorance...”[1]

A few years later, in 1661, Vieira was expelled from Brazil and condemned to prison by the Inquisition due to his “egalitarian heresies”.  When he was released from prison in 1667, he reinitiated his struggle for the rights of slaves until his death on July 18, 1697.

Europe is not the West, the West is Amerrique

The invaders came from the East

D.Anton

European invaders who arrived from the East to Amerrique they used to call themselves "Westerners". It is an old hisstory that had taken place over a millennium. When the European Roman Empire was divided into two, the Oriental half was called East and the Occidental  West. At the time, Western Europeans thought they were the Westernmost peoples of the world.

For that reason and some others too numerous to list here, Western Europeans were accustomed to call themselves "Westerners". But this was not true. Far to the west, very far away, in the direction of the setting sun, across the ocean, there were hundreds of nations as old or even older than most European countries. Europeans did not know, but in the remote and real West there was a huge friendly and prodigal continent:  Amerrique.

Even crawling on the top of the highest mountains in Haiti or Cuba it is not possible to see the Eastern shore of the Sea-Ocean. For a long time most of the people who inhabited the coasts of Amerrique were not concerned with the possible existence of other people across the sea. Probably because of that they did not think not to cross the ocean to go and find them. For many years, perhaps more than three hundred thirty three generations, Amerricans and European remain isolated to each other with little or no contact between them.

But one autumn night in the Amerrican Lucayan archipelago, the islanders perceived the appearance of three large canoes, very different from their own, from where some strange men came ashore. They wore rare costumes and their language was incomprehensible.

They finally learned that the newcomers came from a continent that was beyond the sea to the East, which they called Europe.

Amerrique is the true Western World. The continent of the eagle, the toucan and the condor. The land of avati, of the beans and cassava, the inmense continent of llamas and turkeys, home to prosperous nations and very ancient wisdom, full of powerful gods and essential spirits.. Although Europeans, and many people that are not, say that Europe is the Western World, this is not accurate. For Amerrican people, Europe is in the direction where the sun rises. The ships of the invaders came from the East. And to the Levant they took gold and riches.

The New World is not new.it Is old. It is as old as the knowledge of nature that pervades. It is a continent where a great diversity of peoples have coexisted for a long time. For centuries and millennia Amerrican women and men learned through countless experiences and the elders taught many things young people.

This ancient Western world is the Mother Earth Mother for all its peoples. It is made of infinite places and times. In its landscapes the past permeates every breeze. The youth of today should know that they live in the Land of Many Names. It is the Turtle Island, the Land-where-the-wind-blows, Abya Yala, the home of the qwani and Kurupí, the Nuke-Mapu of the peoples of South.  and once for all it is our Amerrique .

From "Amerrique, the Orphans of Paradise", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones