On Mesoamerican Literacies: Two Examples of How the Ayöök Read the World

Abstract

This article reflects upon literacies that are encoded in the landscape and in natural forms, and which describe a different relation between humans and the environment. It criticises the Eurocentric biases that have equated literacy to writing and promoted the opposition of literate vs. oral societies. Although there has been a turn toward considering literacies to be multi-diverse social practices, education policies worldwide still push for a functional literacy that favours written languages, alienation from nature, and bureaucratisation. The focus of this work is on the Mesoamerican territory, which has experienced systemic dismantling of Indigenous literacies and implemented models that are functional to the rhetoric of modernity and coloniality. Two examples from the Ayöök people are described. These are presages, which are experienced through seeing, hearing, and sensing outside in nature, and maize reading, which is a divinatory practice using seeds. These examples show that the natural world can provide clearly defined signs that are read with consequent affects and effects on bodies and future actions. By acknowledging these literacies and becoming aware that this is a politically sensitive issue for Indigenous peoples, this paper argues for a possible way to change our present harmful relation with nature.