In Lak Ech - Tu eres mi otro yo - You are my other self. I am you, and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.
This is how Maria Federico Brummer's class begins at Tucson High School in Arizona. Students here, part of Tucson Unified School District's highly successful Mexican-American Studies (MAS) K-12 program (the largest in the nation), are taught this and other indigenous concepts, such as Panche Be (To seek the Root of the Truth), including other ways of measuring time (Aztec & Maya calendars).
I am there, to speak to them about the relationship among In Lak Ech, Panche Be and Hunab Ku - a beautiful Maya philosophy and human rights ethos based on maize. It affirms - contrary to what is taught in schools - that the ancient peoples of this continent were not savages, and clearly understood how the universe functioned and understood what it meant to be a human being.
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