NEWS FROM KATHY AND PHIL IN OAXACA
January-February 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
Here we are back in Yukuyoko after spending a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s with kids and
grandkids in New Mexico, great family get-together (we are more than 25 in the family now), wonderfulmusic and dancing (Phil is getting his headtogether)! The only ones missing were Erica and Carlosand family who are in Lesotho, Africa. We hope to see them in June.
Here in the village it has been an unusually cold winter. Down to freezing some nights and none of the houses are heated. With your donations we have been able to get new warm blankets for all the families of the village. They send their thanks for joining in this effort at addressing personal, if not global, warming. We are sleeping under 4 layers ourselves. One of our daughters-in-law gave me (Phil) a refrigerator magnet for my Dec. 23rd 76th birthday that said “Make America Mexico Again!” Of course, this is the great American fear that our leaders are using to Mixtec villagers are descendants of the Toltec/Anahuac civilization stimulate racism in the US, while they are quite successfully engaged in turning Mexico and the rest of the world into consumerist cultural deserts like the U.S., that benefit the super-wealthy, who one way or another won’t pay taxes on their new wealth (they say over 80% of new wealth generated in 2017 went to the already super-wealthy and none of it to the the lower economic 50%).
But there is another way that making America Mexico again makes a lot of sense. The underlying civilization that underpins what Mexico is at its most profound level calls itself the Anahuac. The Anahuac civilization is one of the 6 great independently developed civilizations on the planet with a 7,000 year-old history. Its profound insight into the human condition, as well as its great scientific achievements, were missed by the various nationalities of European invaders bent on grabbing land and finding gold, while making sure the Anahuacas believed in “our” Christian God.
The first European invaders were astounded by the architectural accomplishments of the cities of the Anahuac, some of which were 10 times more populous than Paris and the other largest European cities at the time. The scientific and astronomic understanding that still existed from the great classic period of Anahuac history under the Toltecs was so advanced that they had developed three precise calendars, one ritual, one agricultural, and one astronomical that meshed together every 52 years in accordance with the cycle of the Pleiades star group in relation to the earth. Their 365.25 day
sun calendar was so much more accurate than the Julian calendar, that Pope Gregory corrected the European calendar and gave his name to the Anahuac one, calling it the Gregorian calendar.
But it is the philosophical and social vision of the Anahuac that should give us pause at this critical point in the history of the human family. The Anahuacas believed in one God and Creator of the universe, the great Duality—feminine and masculine. And their understanding of the place of the human family in this creation was striking. They understood (3,000
years ago) that ultimately all of this creation is energy in its different forms, much as quantum physicists postulate today. The role of humans was to help to establish harmony among all these material and spiritual representations of that energy.
Profound metaphors were used to refer to the Divine and to spiritual realities. Three principle metaphors that the Toltec/Anahuac civilization used to represent this role were the “plumed serpent”, the “flowered battle” (Batalla Florida), and the “Quincunce”. The image of the feathered serpent - the snake, which was not a negative symbol in the Anahuac, represented the material world (luminous or visible energy), struggling to unite itself in harmony with the spiritual energy symbolized by the gorgeous Quetzal bird. The job of the human family and individual is to facilitate this union of matter and spirit. As indigenous writer Guillermo Marin explains in Historia verdadera del Mexico Profundo, while western civilization has concentrated its efforts on dominating, manipulating, and accumulating matter, the Anahuac civilization put its efforts into harmonizing the material with the spiritual, or drawing the spiritual out of the material. Accumulation of the material was never a value of the Anahuac. So, even though at times cacao seeds were used as a kind of medium of exchange, they could not be accumulated since they rotted in a few months. The “flowered battle” was the individual and collective struggle that the human person needed to undertake in order to achieve this union with the divine, or spiritual, aspect of the cosmos. The “quincunce” is a four- petaled flower symbol found in much of the ancient artwork uncovered at archaeological sites of the Anahuac region of Mesoamerica, including right here in our own pueblo of Tilantongo. The four petals represent the four cardinal directions, north, south, east and west, along with their respective characteristics. But the center of the flower has a vertical character and represents the human presence in the cosmos and our unique role in bringing all of creation represented in the four petals to a higher spiritual plane. (Spanish speakers can learn more at Marin’s website, www.toltecayotl.org.)
Little by little we have realized that this vocation of building and, where necessary, re-building harmony is “incarnated” or made practical in the social conventions of our village of Yukuyoko and the other indigenous villages of Oaxaca. The custom of “tequio”, or community service, and of “gueza”, or mutual aid, aim to create a sustainable, harmonious community. “Fiesta” celebrates that community in beauty and dance. The community assembly, or “asamblea”, assures harmonious, participatory decision-making with equal participation, and the love of and respect for the Mother Earth assures that this harmony is created not only among the human community, but with the rest of creation. Much of this vision that could save us from our current ecological, economic, and social crises probably existed at some point in our own occidental ancient history. Perhaps in this sense it would be a good idea to work toward “making America Mexico again”. Perhaps we could begin by inventing money that rots?!
P.S. the indigenous woman candidate for president of Mexico proposed by the Indigenous Council of Government and the National Indigenous Congress, Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez “Marichuy”, is at campaign events not to try to take over political power, but to unite indigenous pueblos and Mexican workers around an agenda to replace a corrupt, violent political class, with local governments based on the indigenous valu esde abajo”, from the bottom up. There is always a hopeful side to our human family’s struggle to rise above egoism and greed.
We thank you for your letters, your prayers, and your donations, which continue to make this work possible. Our principle aim for these letters is to share our view from this little corner of the planet. But if you wish to contribute to this work, you can send a much appreciated tax-deductible donation to:
Instituto Paz en las Americas,
2645 Mountain View Rd. Silver City, NM 88061.
Peace and blessings,
Phil and Kathy
