Pericos de Puebla

-7

So I was checking out the Wikipedia page for the city of Puebla before writing this, and I found the following sentence: "The city of Puebla, formally Puebla de los Ángeles, is the seat of the Municipality of Puebla, the capital and largest city of the state of Puebla, and one of the five most important Spanish colonial cities in Mexico." Stop and think about that for a minute: you've got a city named Puebla, which is the county seat ("municipality" is a direct translation of Spanish municipio, which is roughly speaking the Mexican equivalent to counties in America) of Pueblo County, and the capitol of the state of Puebla. That in and of itself is not that bizarre: Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma and the county seat of Oklahoma County, and New York City is divided into five counties, one of which is New York County.* But there's a twist here, which is that "Puebla" is simply the feminine form of the Spanish word for "village", pueblo. So it wouldn't be ureasonable to say that the city of Village is the seat of Village County and the capital of the state of Village.

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 (seriously) 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. 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, the translation of "flower warriors" into Spanish would be "Guerreros Florida", which would also be confusing. Finally, 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. No one wants to be sacrificed, and baseball players wouldn't see the point in being sacrificed in order to bring rain in any case because when it rains you can't play baseball. 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.

I have to say, I really like this logo. It's quite unlike any other team logo I've ever seen. That of course can be a good thing or a really bad thing, but in this case it's a good thing. The drawing of the parakeet is so unusual that I don't know quite how to describe it. It's not cartoony, but nor is it stylized or realistic. Whatever it is, thought, it definitely looks like a parakeet. I have no idea why the designer drew part of the parrots head and not the rest, and I don't know why they chose such an irregular shape to be the part they drew. But it just works. I also like the unusual typeface for the word "Pericos". Again, it's unlike anything I've seen in sports logos. This logo is truly an original, and I love it.

I love it almost as much as the players for los Pericos must love the fact that if they lose the game, they don't get their hearts ripped out in order to bring rain.

*

For those who are wondering, the five counties have the same boundaries as the five boroughs, but not always the same name. The borough of Queens is Queens County and the borough of The Bronx is Bronx County, but Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, and Staten Island is Richmond County. Final Score: -7 points. Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts. Bonuses: Logo, -12 pts. This page Copyright ©2015 Scott D. Rhodes. All rights reserved