Before we began our time in the rural community of Yaxunah, we passed through the small city of Acanceh, where we were able to tour through the market and visit the prehispanic structures that make up the ancient Mayan settlement that today is fused with the architecture and modernity of the town. These ancient structures tell their story through the exposed stones and glimpses of preserved stucco. The pyramid of the masks holds eight stuccoed masks, two on each side of the structure, each one with characteristics associated with the sun god Kinich Ahau. A few blocks away, past the large catholic church and down a side street, surrounded by family homes, the Palace of Stuccos has a frisee that adorns the north face of the building with zoomorphic beings.
Just like in the city, the best part of the program is when the students get to meet their new host families. The family is the main pillar of support for the student’s immersion into any context, but it is especially important in small, rural communities. It is the beginning of a beautiful family relationship, in which the students can form strong bonds and participate in diverse daily activities that allow them to understand daily life in a small town.
Although they are outside of the city, the students continue with their language and culture classes which provide an important foundation for understanding life in a small community. On the one hand, the language classes continue to be fundamental for the students to grow and develop their writing and speaking skills in Spanish, but these classes also help to provide context and allow the students to comprehend certain concepts that can be unique to small towns. Especially since there are some regional words and phrases that are derived from the Mayan language and can only be heard in the Yucatan peninsula.
The culture classes often make much more sense when the students are experiencing life in a rural community since they can now observe and experience many of the topics that are discussed in class, and they are able to learn directly from their host families and other community members.
It is always more exciting to learn outside of the classroom, especially when you get to be in contact with nature. One of the favorite workshops is the one dedicated to the milpa, or traditional agriculture. In this workshop, the students learn directly from the milpero about how to choose the land that is cultivated, what the processes are, the different kinds of corn and the diversity of crops that can be produced.
The cooking workshop is fundamental and a perfect complement to the milpa. The students are able to see how the local food system works and observe the life cycle and processing of corn, from the harvest, threshing, nixtimalization and elaboration of tamales that are cooked in an earth oven, or piib. During the cooking workshop, the students also helped to collect and process all of the ingredients that were used, like annato (achiote), banana leaves, cleaning and prepping the chicken, cutting firewood and preparing the earth oven.
Another workshop that is always interesting for the students is traditional medicine, since it allows them to learn about different forms of healthcare and unique knowledge of the body. In this workshop, the students learned from the expert hands of Maria Elena and don Teodoro, both traditional massage therapists, or sobadores, the different ways of curing the body through pressure, working muscles and readjusting the position of organs. This traditional practice is used to help with digestive issues, injuries that affect muscles and bones, all the way to mood changes that are believed to be affected by what is known as the cirro in Mayan, located at the very center of the body.
The students had a Mayan language workshop when they were in Merida, but it is also important for them to get to know the writing form that the ancient Mayans used. This helps them to understand the complexity of the Mayan culture in prehispanic times. The expert Crisanto Kumul taught our students how the ancient Mayans expressed their ideas through glyphs and how these carefully arranged drawings can be combined into words, sentences and concepts.
To understand more about the cultural and artistic wealth that Yucatan has to offer, the students were able to take a tour through Yaxunah to meet various families of artisans that are dedicated to weaving hammocks, working with bone, traditional embroidery and wood carving. During this activity, they were able to learn more about this work, how the community members learned their trades, how long it takes to complete a piece and how they commercialize their work.
One of the activities that was part of the culture class was to visit the ancient Mayan archeological site of Yaxunah, the name of which means “first house.” In this tour of the Mayan settlement, the students learned about the history of this city, the predominant architecture styles of the different structures, how the spaces were utilized and what alliances this particular Mayan settlement had with other sites.
One of the principal objectives of the Yucatan Program is that the students can fully integrate into a family, a community and a culture. To further this goal, the students organized some activities to give back some of their knowledge and skills to the community that welcomed them in and shared so much. One of the activities offered by our students was “Musical Spoons” where the local kids were able to learn a new way of making music. Another popular workshop was “Trash to Treasure,” where the kids learned how they can recycle objects that are usually considered trash into different toys and crafts.
Thinking about the activities that help the development of the community, such as tourism where the town cenote, or natural well, is used as an attraction and swimming hole, a talk was given to the general public about caring for water sources and conservation of aquifers. This presentation was complemented with an activity of cleaning around the cenote. We also hosted a community movie night, projecting a kids movie for everyone to enjoy.
This year, the Yucatan Program was extra special since we were able to welcome two professors who came to be immersed in the Spanish language and the culture of the Yucatan alongside the students. As the professors are experts in food systems and geology, we tailored some activities to their interests, such as the visit to the milpa and learning about the stages of traditional agriculture, a visit to an apiary to learn more about the Yucatan’s native stingless bees, visiting the Mayan ruins, working with a family of potters and learning about traditional extraction of the natural materials that are used in their work, and of course the cooking workshop to learn about sourcing and processing food. They were also able to visit the coastal research station of the University of Mexico in Sisal.
