Leading Mexican intellectual to address audience
By Mike and Peggy Rivage-Seul July 4, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Lecture
The End of an Era or the Construction of Commonism
Gustavo Esteva
Tue, July 8, 5:30pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25

Gustavo Esteva, the “de-professionalized intellectual” of Oaxaca, discusses the board topic of going “Beyond Development and Globalization” as a public extension of his lecture series presented in the same week for the students at the Third Annual Center for Global Justice’s Research Internship seminar classes at the local campus of the University of León.

The full range of topics he plans to discuss will cover: The Other Campaign and the Left: The End of an Era, Zapatismo: The Most Radical Political Initiative in the World, The Oaxaca Commune, and Creating Other Worlds: Reclaiming an Alternative.

His remarks address the theoretical and practical challenges raised by what he describes as a complex, but viable, alternative to globalization. In doing so, he challenges most of the dominant paradigms of both the right and left, explaining his alternative within the context of recent political trends in Latin America. Esteva also examines the current political juncture in Oaxaca and all of Mexico, particularly the popular mobilization to throw out the governor of Oaxaca and to challenge the idea that election procedures in Mexico have been or will be “cleaned up.”

Esteva has authored more than 500 essays and three dozen books, including Grassroots Postmodernism: Remaking the Soil of Culture, with Mahdhu Prakash.

He founded two vibrant educational programs, The Center for Intercultural Dialogues and Exchanges (CEDI) and Universidad de la Tierra (Uniterra) in Oaxaca, where he continues to work along with indigenous groups and NGOs, including several organizations linked to the Zapatistas. Esteva has served as an advisor to the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. He exercised major influence in the drafting of the San Andreas Accords, which established an uneasy “peace” between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government.

To counter the illusions of development, Esteva advocates what he calls “grassroots post-modernism.” It refers to the rejection of the modern world and its 200-year-old superstitions about development. It is the “grassroots” that will distinguish it from the academic post-modernism of the well-to-do “social minorities.” Academic post-modernism has questioned the scientific worldview along with its certainty and belief in technology, objectivity, rationality and domination by a single culture of “progress.” Meanwhile, the academics in question have accepted the globalism behind the ideologies of scarcity, market self-regulation, liberal democracy, rugged individualism, the universality of human rights and the need to “think globally.”

Gustavo Esteva challenges us to think creatively to shape alternatives necessary for the development of popular democratic process that lead to economies of human proportions and more just societies.

Join him, learn from him and engage him in the process of forming a better world responding more fully to human need. 



This article has been adapted by Arturo Yarish from the longer, more comprehensive piece published in a previous Atención written by Mike and Peggy Rivage-Seul with their kind and generous permission.

Mike and Peggy Rivage-Seul are professors at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Mike directs the Peace and Justice Studies Program and Peggy chairs the Women’s Studies program. Both are research associates at the Center for Global Justice. Peggy also works with the Center’s Intern Program. You can contact them at Mike_Rivage-Seul@berea.edu and Peggy_Rivage-Seul@berea.edu.

Curious about the daily lives of the Aztecs?
By Guillermo Mendez

Lecture
Codex Mendoza: The Daily Life of the Aztecs
Wed, July 9, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos

One of the most fascinating documents of the immediate post-conquest era in Mexico is the Aztec book known as the Codex Mendoza. The codex was commissioned by the first viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Antonio de Mendoza and was made by Aztec scribes in the Aztec style of the early sixteenth century.

Since the Aztecs had no written language, their books contained only images. Nevertheless they were able to communicate a great deal as the Codex Mendoza reveals. The codex was made at about the same time that San Miguel de Allende was founded, between 1541–42.

With little knowledge it is possible to “read” this document and gain considerable insight into the culture of the reigning indigenous power in central Mexico in the early sixteenth century. The codex contains sections on the history and conquests of the Aztec kings, the tax or tribute lists of conquered cities, and perhaps most interesting of all, a section on Aztec daily life, including birth ceremonies, marriage rites, child-rearing practices, education, warfare training and moral customs.

The Codex Mendoza is the subject of an illustrated lecture (in English) by retired professor of Humanities Guillermo Méndez. The proceeds of this lecture will benefit the Pre-Hispanic Music Workshop for Mexican kids.