Mysteries of America (book)

Introduction

The forgotten universes

It is not easy to unravel the essences and mysteries of our Earth-America. The toponyms have changed and the paths have been obscured by centuries of solitary confinement.

Today we use many words without knowing their historical implications or their original meanings. Some of them are more than just "words." 

These are voices that contain deep senses. They represent forgotten universes of visions and magic. We seek to recover the hidden traces and rethink some aspects of an ancient history, but always present. Our exploration begins in the heart of Central America, in a little known mountain range: the Sierra de Amerrique.

The Sierra de Amerrique

The mountains of Amerrique, also called, Amerique or Amerrisque, are located in the area that extends from Lake Nicaragua to the lowlands that line the shores of the Caribbean Sea, in the current Nicaraguan department of Chontales.

While Amerrique and Amerrisque are well known names by local people, these designations do not appear on most maps. Cartographers and geographers have preferred to identify them as Cordillera Chontaleña or Sierra de Chontales.

Anyway, there are some regional or Nicaraguan maps where the name Amerrique is used with slight variations. The Atlas Rand McNally of the World of 1973(1) uses the name Sierra de Amerique, the French dictionary Larousse of 1982, in its section of Central America(2) calls it Sierra de Amérique, the Atlas of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sierra of Amerique, the 1997 edition of the same encyclopedia, Amerrique Mts(3) and the maps of Nicaragua of the Nicarao Editions,

Sierra de Amerrique.

Although the words Amerrique or Amerrisque have been neglected in texts and treaties, they remain alive in local language and references. The word Amerrisque is commonly usedin the city of Juigalpa to name the nearby mountain range; There are many businesses, such as pharmacies or butcher shops called Amerrisque and even a local bus has been called Amerisquito.

What was the origin of the name?

The name Amerrique is related to an ancient town that lived in the mountains before the European invasion. Sometimes they are identified as matagalpas(4) or chontales. According to some authors, their language was close to Lenca, a language spoken in Honduras until very recently, as evidenced by a large number toponymy with similar endings.

There are also indications that Lencas and Matagalpas were related to the Mayan peoples. The suffixes ik or ique mean "wind" in most of the Mayan languages. According to Alfonso Valle Candia, "amerrique" would mean "Land of Many Winds."

In addition to these linguistic affinities, there are well established archaeological ties. The stone idols found in the Cordillera Amerrique, which are currently exhibited in the Juigalpa Museum, show clear analogies with statues of Guatemala or Yucatan.

Amerisco in the sea

Similar names are also found on the Caribbean coast, along the beaches that stretch from Bluefields to San Juan del Norte. The area south of Monkey Point, near the mouth of the Corn River or Corn River, is known as Amerisco(5) and there are references about a site near San Juan del Norte, whose name is América(6).

The elements mentioned indicate that, in ancient times, this region of Nicaragua, from the Caribbean Sea to the Lake of Nicaragua, was truly called Amerríque, Amerrisque, Amerisco or even America.

Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally) this region had been visited by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Juan Díaz de Solís, Pedro de Ledesma, Albérico Vespucci and Cristobal Colón(7) himself, from 1497 to 1503, several years before 1507(8), when the name of the continent first appeared in a European document8.

Authentic inspiration 

For a long time many people believed that the name America was a tribute to “Américo” Vespucci, a Florentine geographer who participated in several exploration trips around the year 1500. Some researchers of the 19th century, showed that,

At the time of the “baptism” of the continent, the usual name of Vespucci was not Américo or Amerigo (its Italian spelling), but Albérico, and it was probably Vespucci himself who changed his name around 1506-1507, to adapt it to the novel denomination from the recently “discovered” lands(9).

For centuries, most authors, probably without knowing it, have argued. that the word "America", like the invaders, had also come from the other side of the Ocean. We think it was not so. We believe that the one who inspired the name of the continent was not Mr. Vespucci, beyond all his merits,

but the beautiful and rich country of the Americas, land of mountains, forests, gold and idols. Our journey will begin in the high heart of the Sierra, near Juigalpa and will take place through valleys, rivers and lakes, to the beaches and lagoons of the Caribbean Sea, and beyond. I invite you to join me on this journey of learning and redemption.

References

1. The Earth and Man, 1973, p. 282 I 6

2. Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse, Take I, Librairie Larousse, 1982, p.403.

3. Page 654.

4. They are also called Chontales.

5. Ref. Jaime Incer in Indigenous Toponymias of Nicaragua.

6. Name recently identified by Jorge Espinosa.

7. Rand McNally Atlas, 1897.

8. In 1503 Columbus visited the Caribbean coast near the

San Juan river.

9. Jules Marcou, 1888, see bibliography

Misteries of America, Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

(fragment of the Introduction to the book "Crònicas de la Peripecia Humana")
History is written and rewritten
Places change, stories change and the protagonists also change.
Kamal Salibi, the contemporary Lebanese academic, had the courage to confront the prevailing religious dogmas by radically rethinking the old biblical stories on solid documentary bases.
The dissemination of his books has been hampered or censured by the ecclesiastical authorities of various tendencies.
According to Salibi, the sacred lands of the old testament officially located in Palestine reappear in the Assir, the Hejaz and the Nejd of Arabia.
Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, who revere Christians can be Issa bin Maryam of the Koran whose remains would rest near Medina in Arabia. Or maybe he is a preacher descendant of Issa bin Maryam who arrived from Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era.
The Kebra Negast, the sacred book of the Ethiopian church, complements these interpretations. According to Ethiopian traditions, the Ark of the Covenant resides in the ancient city of Axum from the time of King Solomon and Queen Makeda. Almost a millennium ago, Lalibela, the Ethiopian king who ruled as successor of the ancient Solomonic dynasty, created a replica of Jerusalem in his native country that still exists and is recognized as such, including temples sculpted in the rock.
We also refer to the supposed tomb of the Apostle Santiago in Compostela in the northwest of Spain, to which pilgrims march annually for more than ten centuries. According to Miguel de Unamuno and others this tomb would actually contain the remains of the Galician bishop Priscillian who preached and lived in the third century in the Iberian Peninsula. He was considered a heretic and executed by the religious and political authorities of the time.
On the other side of the ocean, in the south of America, José de San Martín, the hero of the Argentine nation and liberator of Chile and Peru, has been presented as a typical Spanish white man, with a clear complexion and a European presence. Today there are elements to affirm its Guaraní origin that is denied in the official Argentine history. San Martin claimed his Indian roots in words and deeds on numerous occasions.
The journey of another Guarani mestizo, Don Francisco de los Santos, from Corrientes to Rio de Janeiro in 1820 to rescue his comrades prisoners across thousands of kilometers is an example of adherence to the federal artiguist cause and persistence in the effort.
In the 1970s, in the midst of the Somoza dictatorship, the Nicaraguan priest Ernesto Cardenal imagined a gospel of the poor in the lake archipelago of Solentiname. After the Nicaraguan social revolution the community of Solentiname stopped working actively.
Much earlier, in the sixteenth century, Michelangelo Buonarroti had the audacity to carve a statue of David naked in conservative Renaissance Italy. The religious fundamentalists addicted to the friar Savonarola stoned the image and the representatives of the Papacy criticized it.
During the last two centuries in various parts of the world, men with imagination and decision produced technological developments that changed history, Innocenzo Manzetti, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison and Steve Jobs among others dared to challenge the prevailing logic and created objects that transformed human life on a planetary level.
At the other extreme of the social and cultural complexities we decided to mark the cultural contrasts narrating the adventures of Gixau, a !Kung San who traveled from the Namib desert to the big cities of South Africa and Hong Kong. Through this story, the experiences of a person who seeks to decode the patterns of technological societies from the simple perspective of an ancient traditional society are shown.
 All these stories express the potential of human actions and imagination to modify sites, environments and existences. These capacities, for better or worse, voluntarily or unconsciously, shaped the prolonged and multigenerational journey of millions of women and men who inhabited the planet since the time of our oldest ancestors.
Human evolution is not over yet. Maybe it's just beginning. Cultures are the reflection of a very long accumulation of experiences. Our function is to be one more link in this chain of lives and generations. We will be remembered for a few years or centuries. The contemporary page of the palimpsest of history will be gradually erased. With time we will only remain as a tiny particle in the social and cultural flow of the civilizations of the future.
From: Chronicles of the Human Peripecie, D.A., Piriguazú