MEXICA CULTURAL IDENTITY VS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

MEXICA CULTURAL IDENTITY VS. CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

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MEXICA CULTURAL IDENTITY

The Mexica were one of the last and greatest civilizations of Anahuac. Their power and cultural influence was extended and understood throughout what is falsely known as North America and especially in what today is known as Mexico. Ancient Mexico has been the lifeline, and the heart of our existence from which we the people here descend from. Historically, we have always been connected as a people, not just genetically but through a collective Nican Tlaca ( Indigenous ) culture. Along with our common experiences we have also experienced a common enemy known as Colonialism.

Our Mexica cultural identity undoubtedly is the inescapable historical foundation for understanding our pre 1521 Mesoamerican history and Anahuaca people based on the Olmec and Teotihuacan cultural influence and Mexica hegemony.

In their book MEXICO’S INDIGENOUS PAST by Alfredo Lopez Austin and Leonardo Lopez Lujan in regards to the Post Classic Mexica it reads: 

The Mexicas ruled an immense territory and were at the height of their power when the Europeans arrived. Furthermore, among all the Mesoamericans the Mexica are the people about whom we have the greatest number of documents written in the Latin alphabet. -

  While we would like to criticize this oversimplified view and to allude to the dangers of overgeneralizing, we know that a study of the wealth of information about the Mexicas is indispensable for an understanding of their contemporaries. If we wish to describe the daily and institutional life of a Mesoamerican people in detail, the most pertinent example is to be found in the Mexica culture. -

 The Mexica were a product of ancient Mesoamerica and the continuation of a collective culture first seeded by the Olmec Mother culture of Anahuac. Their cosmovision, artifacts, architectural style, calendric systems, language, traditional symbols, rituals, ceremonies, codes of conduct, education and warriorship reflect the cultural similarities throughout the diversity of Mesoamerica in which we refer to as the heart of Anahuac. It is a great misfortune for many of our people to lack this knowledge and understanding of ourselves because Mexica identity is one of the world’s greatest cultural patrimony belonging to all of our people of Mesoamerica.  

What our ancestors had established before colonization made its way to our shores was a way of life. The sacred path of the black and red ink was the way of the righteous. The way of warriors and possessors of face and heart was brought about through education to give wisdom to Ixtli ( Face ) and strengthen the dynamic aspect of the personality Yollotl ( Heart ).

This cultural accomplishment was not attributed to Mexica civilization alone but also to the existing environment of Anahuac civilization(s). Mexica cultural identity is not based on blood quantum but on its cultural systems of discipline and exhortations nor can it be culturally appropriated by Anahuaca descendants under colonization. Mexica cultural identity is the mainspring in defeating colonialism and its institutions. A lifeline for the total liberation of Anahuac. 

-Thus they have come to tell it, 

thus they have come to record it in their narration, and for us they have painted it in their codices, the ancient men, the ancient women.

They were our grandfathers, our grandmothers, 

our great-grandfathers, great-grandmothers,

our great-great-grandfathers, our great-great grandmothers.

Their account was repeated,

they left it to us;

they bequeathed it forever

to us who live now,

to us who come down from them.

Never will it be lost, never will it be forgotten,

that which they came to do,

that which they came to record in their paintings: their renown, their history, their memory.

Thus in the future

never will it perish, never will it be forgotten,

always we will treasure it,

we, their children, their grandchildren,

brothers, great-grandchildren,

great-great-grandchildren, descendants,

we who carry their blood and their color,

we will tell it, we will pass it on

to those who do not yet live, who are to be born, the children of the Mexicans, the children of the Tenochcans....

Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crónica Mexicayotl, 4-6 qtd.

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CULTURAL APPROPRIATION 

During the 80s cultural appropriation was a term used to confront colonialism and the disparities between majority and minority groups.

Cultural appropriation as a term that was first used in academic spaces has become popular and often misunderstood. It seems now that within the current politics of Indigenous identity, the term cultural appropriation has been misused and misapplied to reconnecting Chicanos and Mexicanos who in their majority make up the largest detribalized and displaced group of people in all of Anahuac what today is falsely known as North America.

As Chicanos, Chicanas / Mexicanos, Mexicanas (Mexica - in the Nahuatl language) we have been the subordinates and condemned slaves to colonialism for the past 500 plus years and were victims of the largest holocaust in the history of the world. Torn from our Anahuac civilizations and human dignity, we have become part of a deteriorating society, infected, assimilated and miseducated by the ongoing colonial institutions and system of oppression. After centuries of European occupation throughout all of Cemanahuac ( so - called the Americas and Western Hemisphere ) Nican Tlaca Indigenous people from north to south of our continent are becoming aware of what colonialism is and using their own cultural identity to heal from their traumas and seek out solutions to achieve liberation from the falsehoods of Christianity and the capitalist colonial occupation of our ancestral homelands.

Mexica has been the cultural identity and representative to a large demographic of people who have identified as Mexican or Chicano. This has become a cultural phenomenon, a movement if you will, based on the diverse Anahuac cultures and civilizations independently achieved by our Indigenous ancestors. The Mexica component of our Anahuac heritage has been a source of nourishment and cultural pride to a transformative process where our people search for their Indigenous roots and healing from the generational trauma that was perpetrated by colonization. Our Mexica cultural identity has also paved the way for many of our people in reconnecting to their cultural identity and Anahuac heritage in general. The Mexica power and influence has definitely reached a milestone and has managed its effectiveness throughout colonial occupation while serving as a means to developing pride and dignity, a way of life that seeks a decolonized mindset and community.

To state that those of our people with the Mexican experience as nationalist and Mexican Americans or Chicanos commit cultural appropriation when choosing to identity as Mexica is not only absurd and incorrect by definition, but is at odds with Anahuac liberation. Mexica self and cultural reconstruction is a beacon to decolonization.

Any group of people in their majority living “white” privilege lives economically, politically and is a beneficiary of colonization who adopt cultural elements from peoples subjected to colonization is in fact committing cultural appropriation. This cultural appropriation is typically done with great disdain. People of another “race” or foreigners who profit financially and socially from the culture of a group of people under colonization are in fact committing cultural appropriation. When colonizers oversimplify and treat Indigenous cultures as a joke are in fact committing cultural appropriation.

Non Indigenous people adopting an element of Indigenous culture without consequence while Indigenous groups face oppression for the same cultural element is in fact cultural appropriation. 

No Mexican or Chicano can culturally appropriate Mexica cultural identity.

We Mexicans and Mexican Americans are the offsprings of Anahuac Nation who have been colonized and wrongfully displaced, detribalized and oppressed by the systems of colonial occupation and “white” supremacy. 

Connected or disconnected, we are merely the continuation of Anahuac legacy which would be nothing without the Mexica component of our Anahuac heritage.

We Are Mexica!

A.N.L.M.