Pericos de Puebla

36

NOTE: This review incorporates text from the previous review of Los Pericos de Puebla, which was published 2015 July 25.

The area that became the city of Puebla was uninhabited in pre-Columbian times. It wasn't wilderness, though. It was used for "flower wars" which is a very pretty name for something that was actually really grisly. Remember, a lot of nations in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica believed that the gods wanted human sacrifice in order to...well, I'm not entirely certain why the gods were supposed to want human sacrifice, but basically every time something bad happened all the priests announced that the gods were pissed and they needed some humans to sacrifice, stat. Whereas Christians who want something to happen will pray, pre-Columbian Mesoamericans would sacrifice each other. (Ponder that the next time you're praying for your sister's surgery to turn out all right.) So whatever it was the priests prayed for, the gods wanted human sacrifice. I'm guessing it was usually rain. People were always praying for rain in those days.

Anyway, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and a few nearby cities that the Tenochtitlanians hated signed this treaty that said they'd hold some "wars" in this valley, except they weren't really "wars" because the point wasn't to kill each other. The point was to capture each other so that the captured people could be killed later. It's not just that the gods wanted people to die, they wanted people to die in a particular way, and dying on the battlefield wasn't it. No, the proper way to die was to have a priest rip your still-beating heart out. So they tried to capture each other, and those who were captured were then sacrificed. Considering the process for being sacrificed, I think if I was a flower warrior who was about to get captured I'd just go for broke and if I died in battle, I died in battle. After all, if I'm dead, I no longer give a shit about the rain. Let the fuckers die of thirst. Serves 'em right if you ask me. But the real flower warriors were apparently a bit more reverent about such things than I would be. They actually let themselves be captured, and subsequently sacrificed.

The Flower Wars lasted, incidentally, for roughly fifty or sixty years. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican gods, you see, were perpetually pissed off. The Flower Wars basically ended when the Spanish showed up. Apparently there's nothing to appease a perpetually pissed off god like having better-armed adherents of another god show up. If you ever find yourself in the position of being a perpetually pissed off god, you'd do well to keep that in mind.

Today, the valley is still home to events that serve as surrogates for warfare. I am of course talking about sporting events. Okay, granted, football (just about any version) is a better analogy for warfare than baseball, but even baseball is still a ritualized activity between two groups of people, often from different geographic areas, with a victor declared. A desire to safely get back home may not sound as testosteroney as advancing until you reach the enemy's home zone, but ask any veteran of a foreign war and I'm sure they'll tell you they understand the appeal of making it home safe. And that, of course, brings us back to los Pericos de Puebla.

The name "Pericos" has nothing to do with the Flower Wars, or flower warriors, or anything else along those lines. It's simply the Spanish word for "parakeet". I understand that you may consider this a letdown given the area's history. I understand you may think "Flower Warrior" would be a cooler name. I see your point, but I respectfully disagree with you for a couple of reasons. First, there's already a team in the Mexican League called the Warriors (los Guerreros de Oaxaca), so this would be confusing. Second, I don't think the players would appreciate it. The implication would be that if they lost the game, they'd be sacrificed to the gods to bring rain. Baseball players are generally cool with being sacrificed in the baseball sense of getting out to help their team score, but actually dying so that it will rain is something I suspect they'd be less keen on. Especially since you can't play baseball when it rains. So with that in mind, I think we can all agree that calling the players a bunch of parakeets is much better. The worst that's going to happen to them if they lose is that they might be kept in a bird cage overnight. That would be humiliating, but it beats getting your heart ripped out.

As you can see, the logo los Pericos used to have was really cool. There was simply no other logo that rendered the totem of the team quite like this. So seeing it replaced with a boring baseball script logo is quite disappointing. I'm not convinced the old logo has completely gone away, because if you go to the team's online store you can still buy plenty of merchandise with the parrot from the old logo on it. But you don't see the logo anywhere else on the website, so at best it's been reduced to secondary logo status, and at worst their just keeping it around on merchandise because they know plenty of people will still want to wear it since it's so much better than the current logo.

Interestingly, one of the other things you can buy at the online store is a special jersey that is adorned with flowers.

I'm guessing that's a reminder of the Flower Wars the players could do without.

Final Score: 36 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts, Script, 7 pts; Letter, 24 pts.
Bonuses: None.