Tierra y Vida

Indigenous spiritual elders and priests tell us that we live in the most dangerous of times. These are the times the Hopi Elders have called the Time of Purification. These are the days approaching that most famous period of the Mayan calendar called 2012, and another less often discussed prophecy the Mayan priests call Year Zero. We are urgently called, by figures like Chief Arvol Looking Horse, to take responsibility for the fate of Mother Earth, for our precious animal brothers and sisters, the fish, the birds, butterflies, trees, and all living beings.

With the Mayan and Mexica codices in hand, the Hopi Elders warned us in the 1990s of their grave concerns about martial law and the potential for mass starvation.

Western scientists like James Lovelock, who originated the Gaia Theory – the scientific theory that Mother Earth acts as a living conscious being, warns in his latest book that we have passed the point of no return on global warming, the point at which it runs away uncontrollably, with unimaginable, devastating consequences.

Other scientists point to the rate of mass extinction. Species are becoming extinct at a rate 120,000 times the norm. 250 million years ago roughly 90% of all living creatures died. Only one large land animal remained. Scientists call it "the Great Dying.” It was caused by global warming.

NASA says “Trees, plants, lizards, proto-mammals, insects, fish, mollusks, and microbes -- all were nearly wiped out. Roughly 9 in 10 marine species and 7 in 10 land species vanished. Life on our planet almost came to an end.”

Futurists warn that we are at the verge of an event they call "The Singularity,” a point at which the exponential increase in the rate of technological change becomes so rapid that is completely beyond the capacity of the ruling elites to predict or control the direction of social change or its environmental and human impacts.

As you read this, industrial society is depleting oil at such a rate that soon over half of it will be gone. What will be left will be harder to discover and harder to pump, and increasingly scarce. Prices are predicted to skyrocket until economies - even whole societies - collapse. War over the remaining pockets of oil has already begun in Iraq .

Pentagon planners say in the future it will be joined by wars over rapidly diminishing sources of clean water and over land that will still be able to grow crops in the wake of the devastating impacts of industrial agriculture and skyrocketing populations as the carrying capacity of Earth is exceeded and mass starvation becomes the norm.

These wars will be fought with weapons of mass destruction and will require the imposition of draconian systems of social control. In the US , such forces are in motion, pushing for the concentration of power in the hands of the US president, pushing for theocracy, and for mass deportations of Mexicans, Central Americans and other people of indigenous descent.

The Hopi Elders say we live in a condition called Koyannisqatsi – “Life out of Balance, a way of life that calls for another way of living.”

Hopi Elder Dan Katchongva said, “We have teachings and prophecies informing us that we must be alert for the signs and omens which will come about to give us courage and strength to stand on our beliefs. Blood will flow. Our hair and our clothing will be scattered upon the earth. Nature will speak to us with its mighty breath of wind. There will be earthquakes and floods causing great disasters, changes in the seasons and in the weather, disappearance of wildlife, and famine in different forms. There will be gradual corruption and confusion among the leaders and the people all over the world, and wars will come about like powerful winds. All of this has been planned from the beginning of creation.”

Chief Arvol Looking Horse has told us,

“This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the Great Myth of Progress and Development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the
responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction.

We have come to a time and place of great urgency.

The fate of future generations rests in our hands.

We must understand the two ways we are free to follow, as we choose the positive way or the negative way… the spiritual way or the material way.

It's our own choice--each of ours and all of ours.

You yourself are the one who must decide.

You alone-and only you--can make this crucial choice.

Whatever you decide is what you'll be, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives.

You can't escape the consequences of your own decision.

On your decision depends the fate of the entire World. You must decide. You can't avoid it.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you yourself are essential to this World.

Believe that!

Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this World.

“Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, where there is no beginning and no ending!”

For these reasons the Aztlan Mexica Nation Harmony Circle has founded a project called Tierra y Vida, Land and Life, or Techqua Ikachi in the Hopi language, and in Nahuatl - Tlalli auh Yolitzli.

The Aztlan Mexica Nation, in founding Tierra y Vida, acknowledges the depth of the crisis we face, and seeks to fully understand its nature, integrate its meaning, and find the means to act - to help preserve and restore the Sacred Balance of Life - and to help soften the blows for all living beings. We will prepare for what is to come, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

As the Confederation of Indigenous Elders and Priests of the Americas , led by Mayan Elder Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj, tells us:

"The time of warning, passive resistance and conformity is already past. All of us are now confronted with an enormous challenge: Survival.”


For more information write Tierra_y_Vida@Mexica.net