Listen,

on this day in the month of February in the year 3 House I went to see a ruler in the place called Holly Wood, and I said

You don't have any stories to tell anymore, you only repeat the old ones that have been passed on and repeated too often, so I will tell you a story, one that has been falsely told for exactly 500 years.

So I told him:
This is a story of destruction of destruction and genocide. They say that 9 out of every 10 macehaultin in all this land died by weapon or hunger or disease. It is the attempted destruction of the songs and paintings and lore of my people by the men who came from across the sea. It is also the survival of our culture at great cost.

Look, this can be a story of great armies and battles if it is needed,

(The man looked only at a mirror in his pocket or sometimes at a mirror on the table).

In that case, we need a lot of people who speak Nahuatl: about 200,000 on the Castilian side, and as many more on the Mexica side. Of course, a few hundred Castilians could never have won without them ... So we also need a few Castilians, I was told that in this place there is only one named García Bernal, so we should look for more.

Also there must be a great number of women, after the fall of Tenochtitlan and its destruction by the Tlaxcaltecs and the Castilians and their other allies, it was the women who rebuilt everything, who took care of the markets and the chinampas as always, and we owe them greatly,

but I was also told that here in this place it is difficult to find women for such roles, here in this place it is all about stories of marriage and not about women's work.

(Another person in the room was talking, he said "this could be like a new Apocalypso but without all the sacrifices, or like a new The New World but without... the "new" world?")

Truly, everyone always wants to talk about the siege of Tenochtitlan , but I say that for me the most traumatic event was the conquest of my people of the Chalca by the Mexica, in this year 1465 ...

...

(Then the ruler of Holly Wood interrupted me saying only Get Out!)

(Later the other person said, he advised to see in Europe and try my luck there.)

Instead I decided I write the story myself as I had always done, because it was and it still is necessary,

So listen. And I wrote:

Such is the relation that they made, that they left for us.

This relation of the altepetl and of the altepetl’s kingly
lines,

painted and written on paper in red and black, will
never be lost, never be forgotten.

It will be preserved forever.*

• (Chimalpahin, Relaciones II 2003, 295 )