The Xinachtli Project:
Transforming Whiteness Through Mythic
Pedagogy
"The Mexicans practiced a purification at the end of every
fifty-two years in the belief that it was time for the
world to come to an end. I have scarcely heard of a truer
sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, 'outward
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,' than
this, and I have no doubt that they were originally
inspired from Heaven to do this."
- Henry David Thoreau WALDEN (p. 56)
At the center of the Aztec Calendar is a human face.
Perched between his lips is an obsidian dagger. His head is
symmetrically outlined by symbols. Most Mexicanos who look
into the piercing eyes of the Sun Stone see something they
know but have difficulty articulating. The language of this
ancient text is now unknown to them, deprived of its use
for nearly 400 years. The message from those who came
before us is lost yet frozen within this monolith.
I have asked this question often to many among my people:
Look at this calendar. Is it part of who you are? I ask.
Inevitably the answer can be summarized as:
"Yes, but I cannot read it. I don't understand what it
says."
They are expressing a dilemma articulated by all who have
been colonized and have not recovered their history, their
indigenous roots confined as museum pieces and academic
interpretations by the very society which systematically
repressed this knowledge. Part of what Mexicanos are saying
when reluctantly accepting a historic tie to the face of
the Tonal Machiotl (Aztec Calendar) is "It's my face but it
looks foreign to me. Part of me is not understandable to my
psyche." Another implication is racial in nature. The face
in the calendar is an indigenous face, but how can it be
mine if I am no longer indigenous?
These questions reflect an internal conflict within a
people affected by five centuries of European colonization.
Reclaiming this face would be an act against the mental
colonization Mexican people internalized during the 300
years under the Crown of Spain, under the colonizer, under
whiteness. It is tantamount to proclaiming that Mexicans
are a millenary not centuries old people. When I initially
attempted to proclaim that it was my face looking at me
from the Sun Stone it was strictly as a reaction to my
awareness of living in a society dominated by whiteness
where my own culture was not validated. At the time I did
not yet understand the language of the conglomeration of
symbols in the Aztec Calendar or the philosophy behind it.
My actions against this oppression were motivated by anger,
in part at the Europeans for having made me illiterate in
the indigenous language of my people and for the genocide
against my people. It is now known that "(in) Mexico there
were close to 25 million people in 1500. By 1600 only 1
million native Mesoamericans were still alive" (Carrasco,
p. 129).
The cultural pride that ensued was useful for a time and
fueled my motivation for political struggle through the
Chicano Movement. Eventually I came to understand that
without knowing what this ancient document said, what words
lay in this stern face looking at me across the centuries,
then my liberation could not be complete. My first journey
into Mexico in 1983 initiated me into a series of meetings
and developments of relationships with individuals who were
keepers of this ancient knowledge through the oral
tradition. My identification with the face of the Tonal
Machiotl began to transcend racial identity, gradually
influencing my realization that without being able to see
the universality of my existence I would be doomed to live
a life confined within externally imposed boundaries.
Eventually I internalized an idea fundamental to my work in
mythic pedagogy: the Aztec Calendar is model of practical
kinship with Creation.
In the classroom we present the face of the Sun Stone as
the face of humanity, a face observing the sky and
recording the evidence of its cyclical movements.
Realization of this universal human exploration of the sky
does not hinder but rather enhances the ethnic identity
Mexicano students may find in the mythic history of this
commonly recognized symbol of Mexico. As they learn to
daily change the dates along with the Gregorian calendar
and understand the astronomical facts recorded in its
symbols, the Sun Stone comes alive empowering the children
with critical but affirming eye to their indigenous
history. They discover the scientific knowledge recorded in
its concentric rings, such as the orbit of the Earth, the
cycles of Venus and the moon, the great alignment of the
Morning and Evening Stars with the Pleiades. As they lay on
our large replicas of the Tonal Machiotl they re-experience
the ancient plotting of the universe and diagram their own
place in Creation.
Reclaiming my indigenous Mexican identity began fully in
1990 when a group of concerned Chicanos convened a meeting
in Phoenix, Arizona to initiate a project in public
schools. The goal was to sensitize young Mexican Americans
to their indigenous roots. These concerned activists had
concluded that to exalt the fusion of cultures that had
created contemporary Mexican society was a denial of a
colonization process. What historians portrayed as a
marriage between a Spaniard and an Indian was more of a
rape than a marriage. This view stripped Mexican and
Chicano people of their indigenous identity. Any liberating
effort based on this assumption could not fully address the
root causes of Chicano failure in public schools. Therefore
a program was proposed that would allow students of Mexican
heritage to claim their millenary history while at the same
time enabling them to transcend the boundaries placed on
their culture by western society. It was called the
Xinachtli (Sheen-ach-tlee) Project, from a Nahuatl (Aztec)
word meaning "germinating seed" (Godina, 2003).
Three years prior, Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonafil
Batalla (1988) in Profound Mexico: A Denied Civilization
had made a similar analysis. He described Mexico as living
two realities, the "reality" of the Mexican image promoted
by the government and media and the one lived by the vast
majority of the population. The first he labeled as
fictitious. The second was actual but living in an almost
underground fashion. Most Mexicans live a Mesoamerican
reality stringently denied by the superstructure that
governs the country. In other words, while the people live
an indigenous identity, those who hold political and
economic power attempt to impose a European image. Batalla
found this detrimental for two reasons. It caused in the
people a kind of cultural psychosis and inferiority complex
by looking and living a brown life but having to pretend to
be white. There are constructs in Mesoamerican cultures
that can be used as models to create a social life in
Mexico that does not rely on the systematic
destruction/exportation of natural resources but rather
build on the indigenous history of its people and their
mythic component.
As one of those who met in Arizona, I realized that Mexican
indigenous culture has been presented as something that is
dead, frozen in time, a museum piece that has no relevance
to our current existence. Like Batalla, the members of the
Xinachtli Project agreed that as long as our indigenous
identity remained mummified, we would always fall prey to
the psyche of dependency and low self-esteem. In 1995 I
returned to the elementary school in Texas where I had been
"educated" to begin implementing the Xinachtli Project in
the classroom.
BEGINNING WITH THE PERSONAL
My childhood experiences at Canutillo Elementary began in
the summer of 1960. Not knowing any English, I entered into
an institution where all of the teachers, the principal,
and the school nurse were white and did not speak Spanish.
Only the janitors, bus drivers, and cafeteria personnel
were Mexican. They did speak my language. I quickly learned
the skin and linguistic characteristics of those who "rule"
and those who are ruled. Reinforcing this state of affairs
were rules forbidding the use of Spanish in or outside the
classroom, rules that were enforced with detention,
slapping of the hand with a ruler, or visits to the
principal's office for paddling. Overt racism was something
condoned. On many occasions, I remember teachers making
racist comments about Blacks and Mexicans without
reservation or fear of official reprisal.
The Chicano Movement and other activist reforms of the late
sixties and seventies changed that. In doing so, one
question had been left unanswered. It was a question I
asked myself as a student of Canutillo Elementary, and as a
militant of the Movimiento. Whenever I currently ask it of
my students (they are all of Mexican descent) in the
classroom, there is an obvious reaction of discomfort.
Why am I brown?
This question, and the inability of these Mexican
youngsters to answer it, is important. What lay beneath the
rule against speaking Spanish was a more subtle and
powerful message. To use Batalla's words, an entire
civilization has been denied. This denial placed my
childhood friends and I in a forked road dilemma. Should we
adhere to an identity we did not understand and that was
pronounced as irrelevant by the majority society? Or,
should we begin adopting a fictitious identity, pretending
to be white. For Chicanos this "passing" is almost
contingent upon denying the obvious that is internalized by
an extension of that important question.
If I'm white, why am I brown?
It took a great mental effort to avoid the answer. In
embracing a false image I fell prey to a psychological
conditioning to be "oppressed." My academic success in high
school could not be accounted for as the exclusive result
of my own endeavors for it was dependent on a denial of me.
My own doubts and distortions lead to a distancing from the
ability to be free because any achievement came with St.
Peter's predicament: denial. I felt like the chimp in the
Michael Crichton novel (Congo) that was taught sign
language by humans. This chimp spent so much time with
humans that he did not identify as a chimp. When asked to
describe his own kind in sign language, he signed, "black
things" (p. 66). As Freire (1970) states: "The oppressed
having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted
his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would
require them to eject this image and replace it with
autonomy and responsibility" (p. 29).
Through the struggle in the Chicano Movement I began to be
purged of my internal colonization and made ready to answer
yet another variation on the question. If I'm not white,
why am I brown? I am an indigenous person was my answer. As
many of us began embracing an indigenous identity most of
our brethren felt we were betraying or denying the "Spanish
side" of ourselves. The Chicano Movement had been until
then based on mestizaje as an ideology which viewed
Mexicano/Chicano people as a culmination of a hybrid
becoming a cosmic race. This idea was borrowed from JosÈ
Vasconselos (1937), architect of Mexico's educational
system after the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
The Native American scholar Jack Forbes (1973), on the
other hand, saw mestizaje as an ideology of colonialism to
divide indigenous people. A mestizo was not a "cosmic"
being but basically an Indian who could speak and dress
like a European. The term anoints people with a slightly
higher social status because as mestizos they are "part
white." Forbes saw the idea as a divisive tool of
colonialism.
In the 1950s Mexican American civil rights organizers, in a
vain attempt to end racial discrimination against Chicanos,
struggled to have people of Mexican ancestry legally
declared "white" by the courts. In many states this racial
status still exists for the so-called Hispanic population.
Early in the Chicano Movement, Forbes warned its militants
not to fall prey to this thinking.
European imperialist thinking has denied Native Americans
the right to possess large (mass) nationalities. The
anthropologists and colonialists generally have decided
that Indians are tribal forever. Whereas other peoples have
had the right to merge tribes together and form large
nation-states, Native Americans become something else
whenever they leave their village (Forbes 1973, p. 199).
XINACHTLI AS INDIGENOUS CULTURE & PEDAGOGY
When a culture attempts to mold another culture, the
children of the subjugated culture are placed in the
dilemma of having to divorce themselves from the reality of
their parents through the self-destructive condition of
self-shame. This scenario places the children of the
dominating culture in the position of needing to oppress
their counterparts as a means of maintaining their own
self-esteem, a situation that is illusory and
self-destructive to both.
To counter the ill-effects of this condition
well-intentioned multiculturalists might encourage, even
exhort, these children to have pride in their cultural
roots. Children of the dominant group are in turn
encouraged to find tolerance and understanding for the
minority culture. But pride is a chair with three legs, it
may hold you up for awhile but eventually you will fall.
While it is important for minorities to be proud of their
heritage, the defensive posture posed when a particular
culture becomes "centric" to the curriculum restricts the
children's creative potential. Culture is not something
frozen in time but a dynamic process, ever evolving. If
indigenous culture is going to be valuable as pedagogy, it
needs to give students a means of achieving critical
thinking, academic skills, egalitarian values, the ability
of self-knowledge and knowledge of the social and natural
world. Without this we would not be dismantling the imposed
identity of colonialism but rather perpetuating the
internal mental colonialism under an indigenous title.
Without interaction based on mutual respect and free of the
burden of oppressed-oppressor relationship, people condemn
themselves to a schizophrenic cultural mode. Children, as
with all people who achieve an internal liberation, must be
able to see themselves as universal as well as particular
beings. The ideology of "cultural pride" exalts their value
as particular but not universal for in having to "defend"
and "preserve" a culture they feel bound to its boundaries
and the idea of "changing or altering" it puts their
efforts of pride and preservation in peril. It is merely an
extension of "my country, right or wrong."
Freire (1970) analyzed that the central problem is this:
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings,
participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
Only as they discover themselves to be 'hosts' of the
oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their
liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in
which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the
oppressor, this contradiction is impossible?they must
perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world
from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation
which they can transform (pp. 30-31).
My participation in the Xinachtli Project depended largely
on whether the program could empower the children with the
ability to transform their worlds. In the meaning of the
term "xinachtli" came the first clues that transformation
would be an integral part of the project. As mentioned,
Xinachtli is a Mexica (Nahuatl-Aztec) word that means
"germinating seed." Xinachtli is the moment when a seed
bursts. "According to Mesoamerican cosmogony, such an
occurrence is a moment when a seed is neither seed nor
plant, but represents a moment of infinite possibilities."
(Godina, 2003).
Through my research I found an interesting connection with
a German mystic, Rudolf Steiner (1924). In his work,
Agriculture, Steiner argues that the creative potential of
seeds lies in their ability to enter a period of chaos
containing an infinite number of possibilities just before
they become their respective plants. This concept, and
Steiner's lectures demonstrating its application to German
farmers, is credited with having saved that country's
agriculture. Without a doubt this philosophy later
influenced Steiner in the 1920s when he created a school
that integrated academic learning with egalitarian
principles and spirituality. The schools and their process
spread and today, like Montessori, Waldorf education
schools dot the globe.
Steiner's ideas of seed reproduction and the cosmogony of
the term xinachtli are very much in line with the new
scientific discoveries of the theory of chaos, which
presents all systems in the universe as ever changing
through the creation of order from randomness. (Gleick,
1989). I interpreted these connections as pointing to the
universality of the Mexican indigenous concept. Xinachtli
became not just the project's title but its ideological
essence.
Each individual's experience is by its very nature
xinachtli. Just as a seed needs to have a moment of endless
possibilities so that the flowering of a new plant is a
creative act and not simply replication, so too a human
life needs this chaos of possibilities. Within the
xinachtli moment everything is possible. Children come to
the world with a strong, even threatening, creative power.
Derek Bickerton, professor of linguistics at the University
of Hawaii contends that children are probably responsible
for the creation and recreation of language and cites the
development of Hawaiian Creole, a language of a highly
sophisticated grammar that includes combination of Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and various Spanish
dialects which have merged into a single language within
the span of one generation. Bickerton asserts that this new
language . . . simply had to be the work of children,
crowded together jabbering away at each other, playing?It
requires a different order of respect to take in the
possibility that children make up languages, change
languages, perhaps have been carrying the responsibility
for evolving language from the first human communication to
the twentieth century speech. (Thomas, 1974, p. 287)
Current research finds the potential of the mind in early
childhood more complex and extensive than previously
thought (Goldbeck, ed. 2001). I wanted very much to embrace
a pedagogy that embraced this tremendous creative
potential.
XINACHTLI AND THE ROLE OF MYTH
Myth is a commonly shared experience across cultures. This
symbolic reconstruction of the world was the final juncture
in connecting indigenous culture with practical pedagogy.
The function of myth is to experience the totality of
humankind in relationship to the world via a symbol or
story that is true but not necessarily factual. Renowned
mythographer Joseph Campbell (1949) writes in his life-form
the individual is necessarily only a fraction and a
distortion of the total image of man. He is limited as
male, female; at any given period of his life he is again
restricted as child, youth, mature, adult, ancient?Through
ceremony and myth such as marriage, burial, installation,
and so forth we translate the individual's life crisis and
life deeds into a classic, impersonal form?generation of
individuals pass like anonymous cells of a living body; but
the sustaining, timeless form remains" (p. 382-3).
Childhood, more than any other stage of our lives gives us
the opportunity to fully experience the multiple realities
of our existence through a metaphorical expression of the
world. It is a unique opportunity for children to use the
mythic process in their developmental education. When
children are asked to "fly" they simply unfold their arms
like a plane or superhero and off they go. As adults we are
likely to follow the request by the clarification "you mean
pretend to fly." It is not that children are unaware of
their limitations, they simply have a natural ability to
transcend them.
During his years of observing his daughter, Tara, Sobel
(1991) discovered a plethora of mythic interactions between
Tara and her environment. What children possess, and what
most adults have lost or forgotten, is the ability to
interact through symbolic drama with their environment.
Tara's mythic interactions did not hinder her grasp of
reality but allowed her and her observing father to
discover the universe in new and even magical ways.
In this early writing, Campbell already suggests a myth as
a valuable tool to transcend our social limitations. In
later years through his interview with Bill Moyers (1988),
he expanded on this value saying "there is a fourth
function of myth, and this is the one that I think everyone
must try to relate to-and that is the pedagogical function,
of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances (p.
31)." For me this statement meant I had found the link
between myth and using an indigenous identity as a
liberating pedagogy. Those seeking liberation need to
transcend the understanding of reality as imposed on the by
the oppressors and the prejudices created by their
thinking. I read Campbell to mean that myth facilitates
this transcendence. Take for example Carrasco's (1990)
description of Mesoamerican ritual. He writes of a
continual process of "world making, world centering, and
world renewing." Ceremonial centers were organized so that
"elites, warriors, captives, traders, farmers, poets, and
commoners could experience this cosmovision and participate
in its nurturance" (p. 52). This process can be applied to
helping students to experience democratic dialogue and to
critically analyze reality.
In the Xinachtli Project we use the Tlahtokan or Speaking
Circle. This activity is introduced in a series of stages
that reflect Carrasco's world making, centering, and
renewing. From the beginning we use a symbol for centering
the circle. Sometimes it is a candle, which is lit at the
start of each session; other times it is a replica of the
Aztec Calendar. Each child then creates a totem such as
decorated stick, a painted rock, or feather. The Tlahtokan
is opened with the children placing their totemic items in
a circle around the center symbol. Our dialogue is usually
regulated by a "talking stick" which gives its holder the
"authority" or turn to speak. Shelly Kessler (1990)
organized a similar process for Crossroads Schools, a Santa
Monica, California private school. There high school
students were required to attend a daily class called
"mysteries" in which students used the process of "council"
for interactive dialogue. While the Crossroads program
focuses mainly on social studies, in the Xinachtli Project
Tlahtokan we cover all subject areas including mathematics
and science.
Another way we participate in "world renewal" is by placing
a circular box within the Tlahtokan parameters. Each
quadrant of the box is painted with the primary colors
(red, white, black, yellow). As a follow up to lessons and
discussions about feelings, children write about a recent
memorable incident and the feelings it produced. As they
sit around the "emotions box" they share their writing,
fold the piece of paper, and deposit it in the box. Each
quadrant has an opening through the children can deposit
their "feelings". Periodically we dig a hole outside and
carefully "burn" away the deposited feelings. We explain
that traumatic emotions are released in the smoke while
good emotional experiences are enhanced by the fire and
shared with the universe.
ELEMENTS OF THE MYTHIC PROCESS
The elements of myth are many but the process may be
divided into four basic elements. There are: Deification,
Truth, Harmony, and Mystery. This process is not linear nor
do the elements fall in a progression but are integrated
into a common whole.
Initiation of the mythic process does not begin with any
one of these but with a desire to give some spiritual
expression to our interaction with natural phenomenon
(Eliade, 1963). The expression of the mythic process as
pedagogy lies in taking action first without worrying about
the meaning behind it. Meaning is a value judgment that
comes later upon finding comfort in the product of
deification or to a group establishing customs,
institutions, or rites. Mythic pedagogy's point of
departure is process designed to validate a child's need to
explore and express herself mythically.
Deification
Creation of deities, inherent in the spiritual expression
of phenomenon, is carried out by individuals and groups
every day in spite of their theological or technical
sophistication. Some deities survive longer than others but
they are products of a need to give human-like form to a
natural phenomenon for the purpose of establishing a
relationship with that phenomenon. This mythic creation
allows the relationship to transcend time and the
restrictions imposed by self-perpetuating social systems.
Main deities initially revolve around the four elements:
water, air, earth, and fire (Hopkins, 1969). The
deification of earth into Mother Earth (Tonantzin Tlali)
promotes a different relationship with nature than simply
thinking of the earth as a "planet." Deities are as much a
personification of God in nature as they are of ourselves
(Hartshorne, 1949). Myth is not religion even though
religion often makes use of myth. The mythic process need
not be tied to a belief in God or as a proselyte of
religion, which would make it incompatible with the
democratic value of separation of church and state.
Children express their creation of a deity when they
acquire an invisible friend or discover that a monster is
living under their bed. In this sense the Sesame Street
Muppets are deities which provide a forum for the
instruction and entertainment of young children. Modern day
psychotherapy has incorporated forms of deification when
patients are asked to "rescue and reassure their inner
child" (Bradshaw, 1991). Metaphors and dramatic play that
seemingly have no connection to a psychological condition
are used to release a person from a mental obsession.
Many of the symbols of Mesoamerica are deities. In the
classroom children learn how they express the natural
phenomenon they embody. Through writing, drama, and the
symbolic interaction of a circle students conduct a
dialogue with these entities under school approved policy
of pretend play. Links with actual historical experience
and metaphorical analysis are provided by the teachers. In
this manner they understand how Quetzalcoatl discovered
corn by becoming an ant, founded the Toltec Civilization,
became the Morning Star, and lives in us today as a symbol
of our rational thinking. They explore how his twin
Tezcatlipoca is irrational thought and the necessity for
Xolotl (sholotl) as their hidden brother negotiates their
relationship through dreams, fantasy, and humor.
Scientifically they learn that Quetzalcoatl is the face of
Venus in the morning, Tezcatlipoca is her face in the
evening, and Xolotl is Venus during her disappearance from
the night sky.
Truth
Truth is often viewed as a commodity to be owned, usually
by those in power. The mythic process views truth as
something residing in the totality of a situation or
phenomenon. Without being able to perceive its totality we
are unable to perceive its truth. Upon acknowledging this
limitation we transcend it by embracing the idea that we
can have a vision of truth, not the truth itself. We
further this with our commitment to be seekers of truth and
learning to respect the limited perception of ourselves and
others. Myths are true but not factual. They carry visions
of truth. Myths are able to transcend our limited
perception without rejecting the ideal of truth because
they are metaphorical expressions of the experience of
becoming "one" with an event or phenomenon.
In the Native American tradition a vision is transformed
into a kind of community visual textbook through the
creation of ritual based on the narrative of those who
received the vision. In the Xinachtli Project, truth as an
element of the mythic process is embodied in the use of a
ceremonial circle. Children are often reminded that
anything placed within the circle is only partially
perceived and that validation of the "total" truth is
dependent on unifying the perceptions of all that sit
around it.
Harmony
Death and destruction are not usually associated with
harmony; peace and prosperity are. While we may relate the
absence of conflict to the state of harmony, quite the
opposite is true. Harmony is actually a process of balance
more in the context of the Daoist notion of the unity and
struggle of opposites. Conflict is an integral part of
harmony-that is the way things even out, the way consensus
is reached, the way Creation evolves. The attitude we have
about conflict determines to a large extent if we achieve
harmony or not. Viewing conflict as something bad leads to
behavior that tends to resolve conflict through domination
or avoidance. When conflict is seen as a useful tool for
achieving harmony we can enter into a relationship that
avoids domination and seeks growth through consensus.
On very practical level life is a journey towards death. At
each step of our lives, death eats away at us through
accident, disease, aging until we must give away the
totality of our being. Western society handles this
contradiction with the attitude that death is something to
be conquered through medical science and a subject to be
avoided. The mythic process embraces death through rituals,
deities, and an attitude that death is an ally of life. The
death of living things replenishes the Earth's fertility.
The mythic process projects harmony as the ability of
letting go, of being able to voluntarily give away parts of
ourselves, not as a tragic act but one of renewal. In the
Xinachtli Project this ability is taught through the use of
the emotions box, whereby feelings (good and bad) are
released through the fire. We also use death deities,
especially in the celebration of DÌa de los Muertos (Day of
the Dead), the Mexican three day festival when the departed
are remembered through the use of comedic play, rhymes
making fun of death, and the creation of altars with food
and candy offering for the souls of our loved ones.
Vialleno and Marin (1989) demonstrated that children as
early as four and five have a healthy understanding of
death and that they are not traumatized by the subject as
is often thought in western education.
In the process of Tlahtokan (Talking Circle) children also
learn to embrace the conflict of opinion not by shouting
someone down or interrupting them but empowering them to
share through the authority of the talking stick. They
learn to wait their turn to hold the stick and see it as a
symbol of another's right to have their say, hopefully
understanding that the urgency they have to share is just
as urgent to another. Decisions are made by consensus
rather than majority rule. Breaks between the gathering
allows for more personal dialogue, even gathering of
pertinent information. Consensus requires negotiation of
conflict, the art of compromise through participatory not
elective democracy.
Mystery
Native American scholar Jack Forbes (1974) observed that
the fundamental difference between western thought and
indigenous culture is the "white man's" inability to accept
mystery. It is the acceptance of mystery, Forbes pointed
out, that is the cornerstone of Native American
spirituality. Mystery is basic to the mythic process
because it allows for the asking of questions that have no
answers. Western though values questions by their
possibilities to be answered. The mythic process views the
ability to say, "I don't know" not as a surrender to
ignorance but to our human limitations in order to
transcend them.
Is the universe infinite? We can assume that it is or it is
not, but given our human limitations we will never know.
What is the validity of asking such a question? Because the
question, not the answer, is a confrontation of our place
in the vastness of Creation, a confrontation that inspires
our intuition, creativity, awe, and respect for that that
is beyond us. Perhaps the best inducement to creativity is
"we don't know, so let's imagine."
When will I die? What is love? Is the world going to end?
Does God exist? Is there life after death? How many stars
are there in the sky? Asking such questions raises an
important element to human life: the validity of faith. The
need to believe, even in what we know. Mystery points out
our frailty within Creation; it is the policeman that
arrests our self-righteousness where we mistake strength
for faith. Mystery is the realm of possibilities, our
gateway to go beyond our limitations; a gateway than can be
opened mythically. Mystery favors a personal view of the
Creator as opposed to a prescribed one. It fosters respect
for the theological views of others. When mystery is
removed from religion we enter the realm of the faithful
versus the infidels, the Christians against the pagans.
Respect of personal vision is integral to mythic pedagogy.
Within the circle of the Xinachtli Project the subject of
religion arises. Roughly one third of the population in
Canutillo is of a born-again faith, which squarely puts
them into conflict with the traditional Catholic
population. This conflict is manifested in the children
when we touch on this topic. The born-again verbalize that
the Catholic children are "going to hell" while the
Catholic children get defensive countering with "no es
cierto, no es cierto (not true)." These encounters are
wonderful opportunities to use the component of mystery.
What is more intriguing about this situation is that
support of the project is expressed by both Catholic and
born-again parents who approve learning about their Mexican
heritage despite its obvious ritually-based activities.
RESOUCES AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLITICAL STRUGGLE
The viability of a project that uses indigenous culture via
the mythic process necessitates the availability of
learning resources that are grounded in indigenous culture.
In the towers of academia much of the information
concerning Aztec culture is based on the interpretation of
that civilization by the very people who destroyed it.
Fortunately there has been a groundswell of neo-indigenous
intellectuals and cultural workers who are giving us a new
view of ancient history, philosophy, and culture. Among
them are the founders of Universidad Nahuatl, an
independent institution of higher learning in Ocotepec,
MÈxico which teaches Mesoamerican culture from the
indigenous viewpoint through collaboration and alliances
with area traditional keepers and indigenous communities.
Martha Ramirez, a U.S. citizen who emigrated to Mexico from
California in search of her roots, and Mariano Leyva
founded this university shortly after Leyva had been
elected deputy under the Cardenista Front for National
Reconstruction, a coalition of left-wing parties that first
cracked the ruling PRI party's hold on power in the 1980s.
Mariano Leyva is a veteran of Plaza Tlaltelolco in 1968
where the Mexican Army opened fire on a student
demonstration killing over 300. Martha Ramirez was a
veteran of another demonstration violently repressed, the
Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War in 1970 where
journalist Ruben Salazar was killed. For many years they
spearheaded Grupo Mascarones, a theatre group much like
Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino. When I met them in 1990
our dialogue gave me useful insight into Mesoamerican
history, culture, and language from an indigenous
perspective. Their training as revolutionaries now made use
of indigenous culture as a ideology for struggle, not just
academic study.
Their work, the political opening for indigenous issues
created by the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, and the
academic work of Bonafil Batalla, Arturo Meza Gutierrez,
and Tlacatzin Stivalet are creating a new atmosphere in
which indigenous constructs in social cosmogony are being
taken seriously. Their counterparts in the United States,
Tupac Enrique, Heriberto Godina, Michael Heralda, and
Mazatzin, are furthering the work as well. The resources
they offer are available to anyone with an internet search
engine. Introduction of the project into public school
would also have been impossible without the political
reforms actualized by the Chicano Movement and those who
forced the government to implement bilingual education.
For the last three years, teachers in the Xinachtli Project
at Canutillo Elementary attend an intensive summer
institute where we are exposed to this revival in the
interest by Mexico of its ancient heritage. Drawing on
personal experience and the availability of informational
resources about Mesoamerica through an indigenous
perspective, the elements and process of the Xinachtli
Project are introduced as an integral component of the
curriculum. Towards this endeavor we can summarize the
components of Xinachtli in the school as follows:
1. While the information shared about Mexican indigenous
culture uses all sources, we ground our presentations on
the work of practitioners of the oral tradition and
scholars who themselves based their studies on native
individuals and communities.
2. Contemporary Mexican and Chicano culture, including
food, customs, and beliefs, is presented as a direct
extension of the nearly 6,000 year old Nahuatlaca culture
of North America.
3. The Nahuatl language is taught as a contemporary
language and awareness is made of the more than 300 words
of Nahuatl origin in modern day Spanish.
4. The Aztec Calendar is taught, including keeping its
days, weeks, months, and years along with the Gregorian
Calendar.
5. Mesoamerican symbols are presented as modes of
knowledge, which the students are encouraged to manipulate
to create their own symbols and stories.
6. Children are shown how the scientific process, the use
of the five senses, and knowledge of the human body are
reflected in Mesoamerican cosmogony.
7. Activities are done through the context of symbolic
interaction via the mythic process and Mesoamerican
ceremonial process.
8. Mesoamerican mathematics are an integral part of
learning math and credited with having developed the
concept of zero as a number and the use of pi as a
geometric construct.
Project members hope to develop a curriculum grounded in
ethnography and data that can be shared on a mass scale so
that our primary goal, the development of a liberating
identity, may be extended to other schools. To this end we
are looking to the scholars on our advisory, all of whom
are researchers at a university level, to initiate this
activity. The experience at a west Texas school serving a
large immigrant community whose poverty level qualifies its
students for 100 percent free lunch program is potentially
a treasure house of pedagogical information.
MYTHIC PEDAGOGY: A PROCESS OF CREATING A LIBERATING
IDENTITY
That humans experience the world mythically is not a novel
idea. The myth of finding an eagle perched on a cactus
growing from a rock guided the Aztecs to build their
capital in the middle of a lake. The
several-thousand-year-old mythic symbol of Ying/Yang
remains an inspirational shield for martial artists all
over the world. Tom·s Atencio (1974), known for his
distinguished work in critical pedagogy at La Academia de
la Nueva Raza in northern New Mexico, stated that "the role
of myth to culture is that of a catalyst to a chemical
reaction."
Conducting classrooms via a curriculum which assumes the
constructs of the dominant (white) culture creates a stigma
among non-white students and negates them from tapping into
the constructs of their own culture. But pitting one
cultural format against another (brown vs. white) through a
"cultural pride" curriculum creates its own restrictions.
Can we use the mythic process to consciously initiate a
societal and personal transformation? Critical pedagogue,
Henry Giroux (1991) alluded to this when commenting on the
writings of black feminist writers whose use of myth is
integral to their work: "The development of stories in this
literature becomes a medium for developing new relations of
solidarity, community, and self love" (p. 23).
La Llorona as critical pedagogy
A source of power of mythic stories is in their
transcendence of time. This can be used to bridge the
ancient with the contemporary while creating a valuable
lesson. Take for example the story of La Llorona (The
Weeping Woman). The legend is familiar to Mexican and
Chicano children. It tells of a single woman with children
who wants to marry a man whom she has fallen madly in love
with. The man expresses a desire to marry her but cannot
accept her children, which are not his. The woman throws
the children into the river in an attempt to keep the man.
He then rejects her for committing murder. She runs back to
the river to rescue her children. In vain she searches but
never finds them and is then condemned to roam the river
forever crying for her children.
This tragic love story is one that was five hundred years
in the making. Leon-Portilla (1971) cites that three years
just prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, the people of
Mexico City would hear a woman crying for her children. The
Medicine People told chief Moctezuma it was the wail of
Coatlicue (an Earth deity) crying for her children whose
pain and suffering would soon turn the waters of Lake
Texcoco red with blood.
Upon the arrival of the "conquistadores" the relationship
of Hern·n Cortez, commander of the Spaniards expedition,
and Malintzin, a woman captive from a Nahuatl village in
Veracruz, shaped the legend even more. For the supposed
love of Cortez, Malintzin helped the Spaniards defeat the
Aztecs. Not only did Malintzin witness the savagery of the
colonizers destroy Mexico City and the waters of Texcoco
turn red with the blood of her brethren but much later saw
her only son by Cortez, MartÌn, garroted by the Spanish
Inquisition. An area of 18 million Mexicans dwindled down
to less than one million. The lost children of La Llorona
were now fully identified. To this day Mexicans will call a
traitor a Malinchista just as a Yankee uses the term
Benedict Arnold.
Storytellers like Rodolfo Anaya (1984) use history as basis
to rewrite the tale, others like Joe Hayes (1987) use more
contemporary versions to identify it with their locality.
What all versions have in common is that they embody the
story of the Mexican people at different levels, some of
which are universal. Anyone familiar with the story can
relate it to the woman in the mid-west of the United States
who placed her children in the trunk of a car and let it
sink into the river believing this would insure her
relationship with her lover.
Chicano children's ability to put the legend in a modern
context was exemplified when we introduced the myth to a
fifth grade class. First, we told the historically-based
version (Malintzin and Cortez) without alluding connection
to the story of La Llorona. As we were telling the story
they recognized it immediately. "It's the story ," they
began whispering. When we finished our historic tale we
asked if anybody had heard it before. They all said , "It's
La Llorona."
Among the children there were different versions of the
story, but all with the same plot. What they all agreed on
was that you could hear La Llorona at night down by the
local river. Even though they agreed that the story
happened somewhere else, at night La Llorona was a local
phenomenon. Here she becomes a deity useful for invoking
critical dialogue.
We asked them to compare and contrast each version given.
What ensued was an exploration of meaning at three levels:
psychological, sociological, and historical. One student,
recalling a recent discussion of the Columbus
Quincentenary, said, "That's one reason we had a hard time
deciding it was good that Columbus came. If we say yes,
we're rejecting the Indians and if we say no, we're
rejecting the Spaniards. It kind of like what La Llorona
had to decide."
"It doesn't matter," said another. "It's right if we side
with the Indians because the Spaniards did wrong to kill
them and take the land. La Llorona knows she did wrong,
that's why she cries."
"But in a way she did right because she did what she had to
get what she wanted," added another, "She was a strong
woman even if she was wrong."
Still another said, "It's just like when my mother divorced
my father. I thought it wasn't right to tell my father to
leave, but that's what she wanted. But it hurt us very
much."
"Yes, I feel like La Llorona's children when my father and
mother fight," another responded. "And if they get
divorced, it will be like getting dumped in the river."
"La Llorona was wrong, she killed her children. It's never
right to kill anyone, especially your own children," one
child contended.
"But it happens," said a girl who in earlier discussions
had revealed her parents are separated and that "my mother
just cares about what she wants. If I complain, she beats
me and it's my father who is trying to get me away from her
for that."
We can see that this dialogue was interactive, creative,
critical in analysis, met the existential needs of the
students, and authenticated Mexican culture not only
through historical references but in finding universal
themes of societal conflict. It would not take much to stir
the dialogue towards other issues related to the role of
women in society. For example, why is Llorona not satisfied
with her role as a mother but needs to be a wife. Who sets
the rules for either of those roles? Can those expectations
be changed, how, and by whom?
Presentation of this story seems to divide boys and girls
into opposing camps. The girls are generally more
sympathetic to Llorona than the boys. Work on this article
had made me realize how much this story lends itself to a
constructive dialogue about the plight of women in society
and will encourage the teachers involved in the project to
use it as such.
XINCHATLI: NEHUAN TI NEHUAN OR IN LAKECH
While the multiculturalist idea that the United States is a
salad bowl rather than a melting pot is a lofty one, it
still places minority cultures as stagnant icons competing
with a majority social structure that is flexible and
evolutionary. White children are not "required" to put on
the attire of their Pilgrim ancestors to celebrate their
heritage but mariachis and ethnic dances by minority
children are seen as promoting cultural diversity in the
classroom. There seems to me to be an underlying current of
inequality in this situation where one group is limited by
its own history while the other is free simply to be.
Nehuan ti nehuan in the Nahuatl (Aztec) language or in
lakech in Mayan is a Mesoamerican greeting. Simply
translated it says "I am you are I." This acknowledgement
of mutual reflection between human beings sets forth a tone
of mutual respect through mutual identity regardless of
age, color, or creed. Any pedagogy that does not enable,
teach, and foster this notion, with or without the
greeting, cannot empower its constituents to see their own
universality and find the common ground of mutual respect
and equality with others, especially with members of a
group who have inherited the spoils of colonial conquest of
their ancestors.
Xinachtli, more than anything else, is based on fermenting
this notion in children. Pride in racial identity must not
replace the personal with the accidental. The personal is
universal, natural, and innate in all human beings. The
accidental is that by chance our souls emerge in a body of
a certain color, taught a particular language, raised in
specific social environment. What guides our work is not
the effort of introducing children to information about
their indigenous heritage, although that is an important
component of the project, but rather a process through
which they can gain deeper understanding of their present,
enhance their academic learning, and place their history
within a universal context where being part of an ethnic
group is a reflection-not a separation-of their humanity.
Transpersonal theoretician Ken Wibler (1986) tells us that
men and women "want the world because they are the world,
and they want immortality because they are in fact
immortal. But instead of transcending their boundaries in
truth, they merely attempt to break and refashion them at
will. They are caught in trying to make their earth into a
substitute heaven, not only do they destroy the only earth
they have, they forfeit the only heaven they might
otherwise embrace" (p. 338).
Surrounding the face in the Aztec Calendar is a
conglomeration of symbols representing the universe and its
cosmic motion. Our indigenous traditional tells us that the
person in the middle is not only recording the natural
cycles of Creation but realizing that humans are a
reflection of the universe. In the middle of the Sun Stone
humanity is finding her reflection in the Cosmos from which
she came from. With this awareness of the integration of
the general with the particular humanity becomes conscious
of our dynamic role. Colonization has made us shun that
Aztec face because of its indigenous features. To fully
embrace it as our own we need to recognize that is not only
our indigenous history that ties us to it but the nature of
our humanity as well. In this way we can understand that we
are a world of brothers and sisters, divided only by the
barriers that we allow others to impose upon us, not by the
design of Creation.
Nehuan ti nehuan.
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THE XINACHTLI PROJECT:
TRANSFORMING WHITENESS THROUGH MYTHIC PEDAGOGY
Carlos Aceves, M.Ed.
Canutillo Elementary School
(c) 2003
Please refer any correspondence to:
P.O. Box 1921
Canutillo, Texas 79835
(915) 328-5171
caceves@ce.canutillo.k12.tx.us