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In Prácticas descoloniales: El movimiento de resintencia cultural y lingüística, Tseltal Maya scholar and educator Daniel Ochoa shows how an Indigenous perspective can bring forth ideas about language and education. He combines resistencia /resistance and intención /intention into resintencia, a decolonial practice based on nurturing Indigenous culture. The focus is not just on opposing colonial forces, but also, like jaguars faced with capitalist encroachment, maintaining indigenous tradition in the face of global pressures. I consider Ochoa's ideas on Indigenous educational and cultural practices in light of Maya jaguar ontology, as well as in comparison with biological studies of jaguar behavior. I then consider how the Zapatistas incorporate similar ideas of resintencia and jaguar ontology into their political praxis. Drawing from Tsotsil Maya sholar and poet Manuel Bolom Pale's examination of Tsotsil linguistic epistemology Chanubtasel-p'ijubtasel: Reflexión filosófica de los pueblos originarios, I compare this with Zapatista concepts as described in Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater's Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language. Together these works show how Maya writers and educators, and citizens on Maya autonomous lands, are living a jaguar ontology that strives to keep balance in the world.
Keywords: Maya, Chiapas, jaguar, Zapatista, Tsotsil, Tseltal, Indigenous
In the Popol wuj, when the lords of Xibalba test the twins Junahpu and Xbalanke by making them spend the night in the house of the jaguars, the twins survive not by defeating the jaguars, but by offering them bones to satisfy their hunger. "Lo de ustedes está aquí/' they tell the jaguars - that which is yours is here (Sam Colop 91). This episode from the 16th century K'iche' Maya text represents an Indigenous ontology of living in balance with the world, respecting the needs of other creatures so that all may survive. The scene has multiple implications for an awareness of the Maya cosmovision. I use it here as an entry to understanding Tseltal Maya scholar and educator Daniel Ochoa's concept resintencia. In Prácticas descoloniales: El movimiento de resintencia cultural y lingüística (Decolonial practices: The movement of cultural and linguistic resintencia), Ochoa shows how an Indigenous perspective can bring forth ideas about language and education. He combines resistencia/resistance and intención/ intention into resintencia, a decolonial practice based on...