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A 501(c)(3) registered non-profit organization
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Educatio gratia Commutationis
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© 1999 -
2012
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Many history text books use terms like “the lost Mayan civilization” to refer to the many indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica who, collectively, are known as the Maya. The implication behind such terms is that these peoples simply disappeared inexplicably and without any living trace – much like the dinosaurs did. The reality is that while the Mayan peoples did experience a drastic decline in both their population and their political power in Mesoamerica they did not disappear. Visitors to Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras can find living members of dozens of ethnolinguistically Mayan peoples today. Among these surviving peoples are the Tzeltal. Around three hundred thousand Tzeltal people live, mainly, in the central highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It was here that I visited many Tzeltal communities. I was surprised to see how similar their modern world is to how we can only imagine their pre-historical world must have been. Of course there have been significant changes but even today many Tzeltal people still speak their indigenous language as their first language; many still observe and practice their religious heritage; many still produce pottery using pre-Columbian techniques and subsistence agriculture is still the driving economy-of-survival for most Tzeltal people. My guide was driving me between two Tzeltal villages when I noticed this young girl standing behind a vegetable stall at the side of the road. She was selling the vegetables. I asked my guide to stop and back-up so I could talk to her. She speaks Spanish so I learned that she was nine years old and had never attended school. Instead she, like her ancestors, had grown up with the expectation that her late childhood would be spent contributing her labor capacity to her family’s economic needs. As I spoke to her I remembered thinking that the literal sacrifice of children’s lives is no longer practiced by the Maya but the sacrifice of their children’s education is! She allowed me to take this photo. Neither she nor I understood at that time that if there can be a “poster child” for supporting indigenous education there surely cannot be many better examples of it. Please help us to provide education to deserving children like her. Please contact us to obtain commercial or non commercial use rights of this photo or to receive a limited-edition, fine-art print of this photo as a reward for your donation. 
If I had to choose a personal, favorite image from our documentary, Peoples of the World: Southeast Asia, this would be it. I’d been invited to stay in an Aeta village in the Philippines. My four-day visit was filled with enough experiences to write a thousand stories. Of those stories one that made a deep impression was the story of change. The Aeta were possibly the first people to inhabit the Philippines. Among indigenous peoples today they must be among the few whose collective experience ranges from close to their original situation to being on the cusp of the twenty-first century. On my first afternoon in the village I was given a demonstration of making fire from bamboo and grass; yet a few hours later, as it started to get dark, villagers gathered at my host’s house to sing karaoke! It was then that I knew that one of the themes of the documentary would be “changes.” Later I observed so many examples of changes in this and other indigenous villages that I soon realized that “changes” would be a chapter by itself (in the end it was titled Changes and Adaptation). Each time I wandered around the village I made new discoveries about both traditional and modern Aeta life. Older people tended to go to sleep quite early, but by mid-evening the village was full of younger people engaged in all kinds of pastimes from playing basketball in the dark to singing traditional Aeta songs. I think it was on my last night in the village that the “village hall” had been set up with the karaoke machine to become a kind of ‘70’s-style discotheque. In the mood for neither singing nor dancing I retired to the back of the hall to observe and look for photos. To my surprise the back of the hall was a “pool hall.” Although the tables weren’t in great condition they were reasonable and I was invited to play and I accepted the invitation. I soon noticed this young boy, who I assumed was the son of one of the players, looking half-asleep in a chair (it was way past a healthy bedtime for such a young boy). Eventually one of the adults noticed him also and set him up with a pool cue (presumably just to try to keep him awake so that he – the adult – could continue playing). Drowsy from both the hour and the heat he couldn’t have posed for a better portrait of change if I’d tried to pose him myself. Please contact us to obtain commercial or non commercial use rights of this photo or to receive a limited-edition, fine-art print of this photo as a reward for your donation. |