On indigenous-ness for the mestizo in the colonial language English and Spanish

I am from this earth. 

This is what I understand. 

A feeling from inside

down below and to the left.

Language is a vehicle to understand what I feel and envision in my brain, heart, and body. 

Community 

Love

Care 

Health

Cooperation 

Joy 

Rhythm 

Kumbia

Kollective struggle for a kollective good 

Kolonial tongue 

ringing

I dream a past expression 

Dialecto Toltec-chichmeca 

Once an encuentro 

publico

1400 AD (gregorian calendar)

Withered 

Future tongue 

singing, 

Today in a place

embodying belonging

A place I care for 

With earth caring for me, 

La tierra que me cuida 

Conjunto. 

Future(s).

Indigenous, Being indigenous, Indigineity 

Means everything insofar as it transforms life, transforms a collective life, our collective material experience, and our relationship to the land,

Our spiritual existence

Being and Belonging. 

To be mestizo-indigenous today means to have an antagonistic relationship with the settler colonizer. 

The Revolutionary Spirit 

Proves invincible 

Manifests at all times 

Like the chichimeca opposed to the rule of Moctezuma I or Mocetzuma II (the final mexica (“aztec”) ruler).

Or the Cuban peasants 

Or the unwavering Viet cong 

I feel it today.  

Did I? 

This is less about identity and more about the revolutionary spirit passed down. Inherited.

Indigneity embodies a claim to the past but is not defined by it. It is everything and more. 

It’s the feeling that creeps when you question the construction of everything. 

When you question the etymology behind and down below. 

Essense,

When you play with language. 

Everything 

As in the joy that consumes my every part when I dream of 

Future(s) 

Liberation.

…   

I am a product of my environment and historical memory and historical weaving to-be. At the center of historical memory and weaving, is a feeling of love, collective strength, and community. 

At its material core, I am a worker. 

Labor of love 

Domestic labor 

Exploited labor

I laugh and I enjoy. And I live and breathe. I care for this earth and learn from it. 

Everyday, I am barricaded from you by thick concrete. 

Estranged. 

Consequently, we fetishize you. 

I am a singular part of the oppressed masses some indigenous, some mestizos, some black (as we understand these imposed categories today)– All oppressed. My people. 

The revolution begins in the heart, brain, and body. Then extends outward.  

Who am I? A Mexica prince? A chichimeca peasant? A tepeyacano in rebellion? A belonging, birthed from migrants. The planting of a seed? 

The way Juan Diego is described. 

Tonantzin. 

Honoring Mother Earth. 

I read somewhere that Zapata 

Stormed into town

On horseback

with a banner representing Mother Earth. 

Tonantzin.

Some say 

Virgen de guadalupe. 

Mary. 

Tonantzin. 

I am for myself. It allows me to be for others. 

I am the weaving to be done. 

I am forever caught, 

intertwined in a process of migration. 

I am of this place. 

And the other. 

And the future place 

woven patiently.