U Belilek Kaxtik Kuxtal – the road to our existence

How to work and live in 2019 in a Mayan community in the Yucatán peninsula? What place for Maya culture, traditional knowledge and know-how: medicine and pharmacopoeia, agriculture, cooking, handcrafts, music. ? What place for mayan language, history and especially recent (The War of the Caste)? How to keep this heritage alive in the younger generation? Not only through a conservation approach (The War of the Caste Museum)* but also everyday and in daily life, and make it an asset for the future? The cooperative U Belilek Kaxtik Kuxtal, created in 2003 (the road to our existence) tries to answer it by organizing, in the community of Tihosuco (Quintana Roo), various activities around cooking, crafts, medicine and traditional music (Maya Pax) and offering tours and workshops.

The organization of an exchange with a French public in the framework of a festival dedicated to the ruralities of here and elsewhere, it is the occasion to advance a little more in this reflection, to imagine solutions and why not possible ways of collaboration. In a more playful way, it is to make known the Mayan language to a French public by translating some key words of the rural world: (field, forest, garden, soil, spring,..).and learning workshop.

Because in a growing context of cultural standardization and intensification of commercial exchanges some problems echo in France, around the conservation of traditional knowledge and know-how particularly in a rural world threatened by rural desertification and the intensification of Agriculture.

“La Fête de la Source” (the feast of the spring) is a small festive event and friendly exchange around ruralities here and elsewhere and other possible ruralities more respectful of the man and his environment. It is held every year for 4 years around August 15 a few km north of Angouleme (France) at a place called Chez Rousseau in the town of Vars.

Each year a theme is identified, this year it is “Local and Indigenous” around the different modes of production and local consumption, and indigenous cultures, echoing the many initiatives and current reflections on these themes and the international Year of Indigenous Languages.

*The War of the Caste Museum. This museum tells the story of how the Mayans in the area fought for nearly half a century (1847-1901) for the land that they had farmed for centuries and unfair treatment. The Mayans had fought back against the Mexican federal troops and this museum shows artifacts and tells the story of the some of the Mayan leaders