BACK TO MY HOME PAGE

Welcome students and colleagues, friends and family, if you have made it this far, I encourage you to stay a bit longer and read about some of my work. The writings reflect many of the thoughts that I carry with me throughout the course of a day, evening, and often times, the dreams that take hold of me while I sleep. The verses represent the inner voice in me that speaks of the past, the present, and the future. Writing is my ultimate form of expression that allows me to reflect, inspire, get well, and grow. The energy that feeds my work, I pull from themes that correspond to Mesoamerica, my ancestral place of birth, and the area I study. References to symbols of the past, deities, and natural phenomenon, dominate certain pieces, and blend with current verses of life, love, and death. I have never taken a writing class... the only "style" that exhibits my work is the one that I create from my imagination, heart, and dreams.

I’m an avid builder and horticulturalist, and so I spend a lot of my time building things and growing different types of herbs and plant food. I do not identify as an artist nor do I make art for aesthetic purposes; my work solely materializes a ritual-ceremonial or utilitarian function. The craft of working with wood I learned from my father, by watching him design and build homes throughout much of my adolescent youth. I also learned how to work with stone by watching my uncles construct brick and rock landscapes, in the wealthy neighborhoods were they labored during much of the 1980s, when construction was booming. My paternal grandpa Juan was also a craftsman, hence why all his sons became builders of some sort, and so building has always been an integral part of my family’s trade history. I learned about plant cultivation from my abuelita Mercedes on my paternal side and my abuelito Severo on my maternal side. Much of the landscaping strategies that I learned from my grandparents came with them from Mexico when they migrated to Alta California, in the early 1960s, along with my parents. A lot of the building and planting strategies that my family has implored have been in use for over 3,000 years. It is my purpose to revitalize and sustain these ancestral practices through ceremony, household building, and plant cultivation.

My fascination with building and growing food is not only familial, but also physical-skeletal (see my Physical Anthropology 101 blog), and because so, I have an admiration for the morphology of the human hand. The hand is unlike any part of the body, and because we use our hands every day, we literally take them for granted, sometimes failing to notice their full potential use. Our hands are our first weapons of choice in an attack, yet they are the first part of the body that we extend when helping or consoling someone. With our hands, we build shelter, writer letters, prepare food, and unknowingly, make love. Our hand-digit coordination is unique because it is precise, well adapted for creating, and for using and making tools. Hand-digit use coordination has been a part of our human evolutionary past since we inhabited arboreal environments, way before we developed bipedalism. When combined with tool use, the creative use of the hands has the capability of decolonizing our minds and bodies.

My inquiry into the relationship between hand-bone morphology usage and social behavior remains in the early stages. Nonetheless, some preliminary findings I modeled in a recent paper where I discuss the role of the hands, and early human tool making, in the creation of spatial wellness. The paper is published in Vol. 3 No. 4 of the International Journal of Development and Sustainability.


On the Avian Serpent and Venus of Early Formative times (1500-900 B.C.)

Both affiliating and signaling, Venus-laden figurines and carved pottery reveal evidence of a ritualized behavior and cosmology, one that, for the most part, was participatory among early Mesoamericans.  Building-up of the notion of a regional cult, the Venus star integrated well with the Avian Serpent, as both forces, one of worldly significance (Avian-Serpent), and one of universal significance (Venus), worked jointly to bring about a social order while people negotiated resolution(s), occurring further within the structure of a regional/religious cult.  Richard L. Lesure (2004:88) makes the point that Olmec-style objects do not simply evince a two-way relation between a person and his or her gods, but instead a three-way relation between a person, the gods, and other people.  The Avian Serpent and Venus, together, display the behavioral creativity, present during social dialogue between people, taking place during scheduled intervals, and perhaps marked further by the different phases of Venus.  Gerardo Aldana (2005:309) does note that a single sky-watcher, over a duration of eight years can gather enough data on Venus to coordinate ceremonial events, of which would have fallen in line with the observable planetary phases and phenomena evinced by Venus.  In times of need one looked toward the sky for answers (Aldana 2005:318), surely after a long emotional journey, after the cup of tears overflows, and a new life begins.

Olmec Studies & Critical Reflection

Rightfully so, advancements in Olmec studies are not only a contribution to the humanities, but serve to collapse anti-ethnic studies initiatives that threaten to eliminate the teaching of ancient culture, a vital component of most ethnic studies curriculum.  A prime example is Arizona where the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) eliminated the Mexican-American Studies (MAS) program; a program well noted for sustaining high graduation rates, banned even after an audit company (hired by TUSD) found the program to be compliant with State law and beneficial to the learning community in Tucson.   

Access to education, social justice, and yes Olmec studies, together form a culturally relevant pedagogical model, where moral, political, and ethical contexts of teaching are seen through the lens of critical reflection, whereby one as an educator asks how their positionality influences their students in either positive or negative ways (Howard 2003:197).

2003  Howard, Tyrone C.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy:  Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection. In Theory Into Practice, Volume 42, Number 3, Summer 2003, College of Education, The Ohio State University, Ohio.

Professora Juana Mora

My parents have worked, and continue working, never once complaining about what they didn’t have, so they could give it all to us.  My brother builds the city of LA, and my sister teaches its youth – Professora Juana Mora, Rio Hondo College

The DNA of Mexican-American studies

Researching better ways of making my work more socio-politically relevant and engaging to the times.  Now is not the interval to remain complacent, take a break, or remain silent on taking a stand, not when the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona has banned the teaching of Mexican-American Studies across the board.  How dare they take a stab at Mesoamerica, the DNA of Mexican-American studies.