just beginning... not sure where this will go or if I will get too busy to continue.
My experiences living in this mestiza body in this colonial context have taught me the importance of expressing my heart but also the danger in doing so. As I have moved from being a waitress, to a performance artist, to activist, to student, to educator, to law student and now changing into a new combination of all of these things... I have found that I have had to twist and turn, sometimes distorting my body and mind to negotiate the colonial battlefields of education and law. My experiences have taught me that it is dangerous in the borderlands where I exist. It is beautiful, joyous, and painful at the same time. I have found that in my efforts to move through this hostile territory I constantly have to make decisions about how to survive here. Do I speak out from my heart? What is at risk? Long ago I dedicated myself to working for social justice through transformational & libratory approaches. This artist turned teacher & almost lawyer still speaks from the heart but I have found that the spaces that I move in now - law & higher education are spaces where my feelings and perspectives - my heart and my transformational methods are not valued. I wonder how other mestizas are managing in these hostile environments. I thought that this could be a space where we could speak our hearts with courage and strength. I believe that this was the way of our people before colonization and that to avoid the becoming tools of the colonizer we must be reflexive and self-critical. Our pedagogy should have a conscience & consciousness. That conscience comes from our hearts. We must remain in touch with our hearts and use the power of our hearts in our praxis.
The idea of In Ixtli In Yollotl seems like an appropriate place to start.
"The phrase "face and heart," often encountered in Nahuatl texts, carries a complex metaphoric meaning based on the conception of the beating heart (yollotl , derived from the same root as ollin , meaning movement) as the symbol of the dynamic center of the person, and the face (ixe or ixtli , not simply the physical face visible to others) as expressive of his being in the deepest sense. The physical face, therefore, had the metaphoric potential to signify one's true face by manifesting those characteristics that made him "whole," that is, unique and well integrated, as a result of the transformative process by which the outer appearance came to reflect the inner, spiritual being. When this integration had been achieved, a person was said to have a "deified heart" and to be "master of himself." It is no wonder, then, that an important goal of Aztec education was to teach a person to create such a "deified heart," thus enabling him to develop his innate spiritual potential by becoming "one who divines things with his heart,"[55] one who infuses ordinary experience with spiritual energy. Precisely, of course, the task of the artist.
It would follow that, as León-Portilla puts it, "if the good artist is master of himself and possesses a face and a heart, he will be able to achieve what is the proper end of art: 'to humanize the desires of the people,' that is, to help others to understand things human and divine, and to behave in a truly human way."[56] Behaving in such a way would be the result of understanding one's essentially spiritual nature and allowing that nature to express itself in the world of space and time, thereby transforming the material world into spirit. Thus, the Aztec poet, like his predecessors in the earlier cultures of Mesoamerica, was the messenger of the spirit, the transformer who had himself been transformed:
God has sent me as a messenger.I am transformed into a poem.[57]
That transformation can stand as a symbol here for the entire effort of Mesoamerican spiritual thought—to embody in a system of metaphors the various ways in which the ground of all being manifested itself through transformation as the earth and the heavens and all they contained. This magnificent system of metaphors, far more complex than we have been able to suggest here, reveals clearly that for Mesoamerica all of reality—inner and outer, microcosmic and macrocosmic, natural and supernatural, earthly, subterranean, and celestial—formed one system, a system whose existence betrayed itself in the order that could be found behind the apparent chaos of the world of nature. "
See: Manifestation: Transforming the Life Force at...
http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft7x0nb536&doc.view=content&chunk.id=d0e5448&toc.depth=1&anchor.id=0&brand=eschol
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2 comments:
luv this quote here:
"...to help others to understand things human and divine, and to behave in a truly human way."
Isn't this what the colonialist brought to us (in Catholicism for instance)? We were told "THIS" is the way to being closer to the divine...to being more human??
Your life journey is not exceptional or unique. There are millions of us, like you, finding our heritage, our beliefs, challenged and taught to us to be subhuman...insignificant.
What is extraordinary about your journey is this blog here. Your activism. Your strength. That lets us all know we are not alone in this land of colonists.
I look forward to reading more. :)
thanks chula! I guess I have felt so alone at times - being outspoken and struggling against power & dominant idealogies etc... I thought that we needed a place to be real and share that pain and frustration. I just hope that it is helpful to someone out there who might feel silenced, marginalized, bashed, "characterized as the "crazy one", angry one", "too radical", etc...
People try to police our voices when we speak up - often they do this in ways that make us question ourselves and our own self-worth. I just hope that we can create spaces where we can express our hearts and not feel compromised or attacked.
It is a struggle to work for the well-being and freedom of our peoples. No matter what job or life work we are engaged in. We all must constantly negotiate the roles we play. Can we totally work outside of the system? If we work with the system how do we not become it? When are we just implementing bad policy that serves the interets of those that seek to oppress us? Is our presence in our role in the system really transfoming society? or are we just being used like tools of the master? - used to police and oppresss our own.
I think it is important to do everything possible to stay human, keep our voices, protect our hearts and souls, and maintain our relationships with each other. Lord knows, we have many heavy burdens to bear and few allies in a hostile world - so we need our realtionships with other sisters to help us to survive the hard times and get to better days. I am so glad you are in my life beautiful sister! love you much!
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