HSP in Four Directions

Nahui Ollin is the Mexican Indigenous epistemology representing the "four movements." within the Aztec calendar and its physical, spatial, scientific, and philosophical meanings. The four principles are Tezcatlipoca, introspection, Quetzalcoatl, beautiful knowledge, Huitzilopochtli, Will, and Xipe Totec, transformation. (Arce 2017). 

Don Audalino Sac hosting a Mayan Ceremony for one of our volunteer trips.

Tezcatlipoca

Each day my wife begins our reawakening with a ceremonial walk through the four directions. We follow the Lakota way of starting to the West. The direction where the sun sets symbolized by the color black. It is the direction of introspection that provides the guidance to stay on course when we may be confused by strong emotions.  

The Highland Support Project utilizes a reflective process concerning the role and obligations of an outside agent seeking to act in solidarity with a people experiencing political violence.  To establish one's position in a system of dominance and reflect on how it shapes your assumptions, goals, and perceived solutions can assist us in identifying the selfish motivations behind the contradictions that produce unintended results.  

For the Highland Support Project, we realize that the root cause of the low quality of life indexes we observe is a colonial process that continues to foster systems of dependency and trauma. Therefore, we recognize that our priority must be to innovate and explore transformational models of development that challenge rather than perpetuate colonial power relations. We found that the fastest way to find models that challenged the colonial relations defined by our privileged positionality was to identify those that represented the greatest inconvenience for our revenue generation and external validation. 

Quetzalcoatl

As part of our family's ceremonial practice, we burn yellow candles that represent the Sun at its zenith. From the Maya traditions of my wife's ancestry, the South represents seeds. The potential of the future contained in the shells of the past and sustained through the current of time.   

The etymology of the word Quetzalcoatl speaks to its power as beautiful or complete knowledge. Quetzal, the resplendent bird whose feathers have been used as a form of currency and to symbolize political power throughout Mesoamerica.  Coatl in Náhuatl means serpent. The headdress of Ixchel, the Mesoamerican deity associated with midwifery and childbirth, reflects the relationship of the serpent to feminine energy. 

In conversations with Don Audalino Sac, a Kiché elder, and an AJQ'IK, or day counter, the combination of the terms represents the harmony between heaven and earth. In Mesoamerican cosmology, everything exists in a balance between opposites. (Restal, Mathew 2011). There is a reflection of this duality in the divine realms of the Universe and on the earth (Carrasco 2014).  Quetzalcoatl is the exception. A unity of masculine and feminine, heaven, and earth.  We understand this harmony of duality in terms of indigenous epistemology and pedagogy. In workshops developed by Maya scholar Daniel Matul for Guatemalan educators, he explains that we have two hemispheres in our brains. While they have different functions, they work together in both creative and analytical tasks.    

The work of the Highland Support Project contemplates the beautiful knowledge of unity to inform our organizing model to appreciate the history of context and the emotional desires for the future expressed by our partners. To ground our work in an understanding that goals are not just about what you wish to obtain but also how you want to feel.   

Huitzilopochtli

We continue our ceremonial practices lighting a white candle representing the North. White is the color of the wind. Those things we cannot touch or grasp but know that exist such as electromagnetic currents.  The wind has the power to cleanse out negative energies and to bring innovation as the Northern winds bring the first rains of Spring. 

There is a methodological conflict underlying our work. On the one hand, we exist to raise critical awareness amongst nonindigenous partners concerning the historical dynamics of colonialism and to explore contemporary manifestations. The result of this process is frequently cognitive dissonance for participants that have never experienced a different perspective. These reactions can be detrimental to our underlying business model of service-learning or charitable contributions.  From the perspective of our community partners, the purpose of the relationship is to obtain funding for the desired community projects and their salary support for ongoing organizing and services they provide. The frequent refrain is that while raising awareness is a worthy objective, they are not in the economic conditions to afford the price of alienating supporters.  

We must respect our partners' desires and objectives as the primary organizing ethic of cross-cultural solidarity. The primary ingredient required to avoid devolving into a manipulative charade for economic or emotional gain is the warrior spirit for the common good—a force to counter the justifications and rationalizations to abandon the work of crafting programming that effectively accomplishes our awareness outcomes and our partner’s financial objectives.  In a final analysis, this apparent contradiction contributes to more effective communication

Xipe Totec

Completing our morning ritual is the offering of a red candle that represents the East. The direction of the Sun rising with the new energy and transformation.

The organizing documents of the Highland Support Project defines our mission as promoting transformational models of development with Indigenous communities of the Americas.  We chose to focus on the lexicon of transformation because we do not view our goals as altering the positioning of people in a dysfunctional system. Instead, our goal is to explore alternatives and discover improvements.