Summary Of Father Benito's Song Of Hummingbird '

A never ending struggle for survival and revelation when everything is taken away finding what is left to care for. Father Benito captured the essence of Hummingbird and the conquered fate she endured. In the end Father Benito the same priest who listened from the beginning to the end respected and with his recordings on paper the memory of Hummingbird's song will never die as his thoughts fade into the night with a final thought, “His question was answered when he reminded himself that he had captured her word on paper and that her song would live on in Anahuac forever” (Limon 217). The final though of this book validated all that Hummingbird wanted which was her story to be heard. An emotional story griped with enticing character development

by Father Benito and a inside to the Aztecs conquered story.Throughout the story Hummingbird is deserving of sympathy despite her choices to fornicate with Tetla and kill Balthazar because of the overwhelming tragedy she’d faced including the desecration of her homeland, the murder of King Moctezuma by the hand of her supposed ‘lover’, and the battering inflicted by her first husband Tetla who was infact her cousin. Father Benito a young priest who is one of the protagonists even begins to see the story from her perspective with great sympathy.

Even before the book starts you can refer back to Limons notes on what Hummingbird and her peoples story of devastation is about.“Like many of her people, she experienced the awe caused by those bearded white men when they first arrived; a wonderment that soon gave way to the outrage of seeing the devastation of her land, the disruption of her life,and the end of civilization as she knew it”(Limon Author Notes).

Strange foreign men arriving in her home than all the sudden tearing apart everything and causing corruption to Hummingbirds life.The same man Hummingbird thought to be different from the rest of the invaders with an inviting smile on his face Captain Cortés infact was the man who had ordered Baltizar to kill King Moctezuma. The king's wife wife gets in the way resulting in her death,causing hummingbird rushing to her aid,and gets struck down as a result. “They had their orders, and those of us who had remained in the room knew what was going to happen. Moctezuma’s wife tried to shield her husband, but one of the Spaniards hit her on the head and she died instantly. When I lunged forward to help her, the same man swung out but missed my face. Baltazar and the other man forced me aside, and when my eyes met those of the man with whom I had lain, he said nothing. He only stared at me with vacant eyes”(Limon) i chose this passage just like many others to support the struggles of the indigenous culture but also struggles for women. Hummingbird loyal to her people stood

by and helped. But even the Mexica culture had oppression of women. The first man she had laid with and married beat her close to death because she was not a virgin. But in this passage with Baltazar a man she had also laid with was willing to kill her for being not only a native but a woman. Back and forth from a women's culture to the spaniard hummingbird just like many other women were oppressed and dehumanized. Hummingbird was a servant to king Moctezuma’s wife so she witnessed first hand the death.