Ubiquitous History

As students and teachers it is easy to get caught up inside history textbooks. I am thankful for this week because our experiences have been reminded me, again and again, that history is not set in stone as written in textbooks and that examining our own cultures and histories help us reaffirm our identities and make our lives richer.

History was alive in the voice of Yao as she explained that at least one million people speak Nahualt, the language of the Aztecs, and that millions more use the Aztec calendar and practice its religious traditions and dances. The Aztecs came to life again as Laura taught us how to dance their music and salute the four winds. The Aztecs became real when we made tamales and tortillas like the ones Sahagun described 600 years ago. 

When we prepared ceviche and chicha yesterday, we re-enacted a culinary tradition that has digressed little from its original Inca roots. Pairing chifles with our ceviche demonstrated that, although tragic, the encountered between Incas and Spaniards also produced good things. 

Today, the African Diaspora was no longer confined to a chapter in a book. We experienced it as we listened to Melody explain why people of African descend stay connected deities like chango, ochun, babalua and yamaya. Dancing slave music from Trinidad, we celebrated African culture in the Americas with our hands, feet and laugh.

In school we were taught about feet binding, indenture servitude and the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today these three “concepts” became real through Dona Caridad. Born in Cuba to Chinese parents, Dona Caridad spoke of female relatives in China whose feet had been bound in hope of marrying into wealth, how her father came to Cuba from China to work as an indenture servant, how he won the lottery and set up businesses that made him rich, and how his fortune was confiscated after the Cuban Revolution and replaced with monthly food rations and a $60 dollar allowance. Her talk ended with a reminder to work hard and steadily, for this is the only way to take ownership over our own histories.

-Girelle