From La Jornada
Roots
The link above shows my people. I remember them, some are already dead.
The one loss that pains me more is my mother's, the beautiful woman left of Granma Tayde in the picture linked above in the Roots link. I am the teenager with a light jacket on the row just below her.
Next week on Monday and Tuesday, here in Mexico, we remember those just dead (my mom), and the ones that left before. She gave me a lot, I remember her last, when I left Mexico to go to my family in the US early this year. Her beautiful face looking towards me with so much love, is a gift I'll keep with me till the day I die.
Where does this deep connection to the family that gave us life come from?
Here is my one cent worth of thoughts.
There are three grains I know which originated three ancestral cultures. Rice, Wheat, and Corn: Let us start with Corn.
Nine thousand years ago the people here in the Balsas River domesticated this grain. The culture is the Mesoamerican culture.
Rice. The culture is the Asian culture.
Finally, Wheat: The culture is the European, and Middle Eastern cultures.
Without harvested food there is no culture, period.
In `` The 10,000 year Explosion,'' Cochran, and Harpending, argue that humanity had a spurt of growth during the Neolithic. By the year 8,000 before the Common Era, agriculture happened in ``chosen'' places of our Earth. Balsas River, Euphrates and Tigris, and somewhere in the Yang Tze, or the Ganges rivers; as far as I know, the jury is still out for the credit for Rice, it could be India, it could be China. For what I have to say here that is irrelevant.
In those three regions, Europe-Middle East, Asia, and Mesoamerica the reverence for the dead is irrefutable.
That proves to me that our Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Yucatán cultures are the equal to any other culture of the same age. The wisdom of poor people in these places is humbling, very humbling.
Several years ago, in November, we took our guests to a small town near Puebla City for the ``Día de Muertos'' celebration. In every house we were welcome and fed!. That is culture, all humans are welcome, whether the people know you personally or not. Everyone is welcome to honor the dead.
Last night I was in my way from Iguala to Chilpancingo, I checked the balance in my University account and happily found that I was finally paid, after almost three months of unpaid work!, full of joy I went out of the ATM booth, to find out a whole Central Plaza, filled with millennial practices of honoring our dead. Girls were dressed like ``La Catrina'', ``The Elegant Skull.'' Boys dressed like Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata. I was extra happy with the great men these kids chose to remember.
Mexico is a Great Country, Guerrero is a Great State, all is due to corn, and I am happy to report that kids know that!
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