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Biographical

IN LAK ESH. “You are my other self”. 
1. Introduction.
Ethnogenesis usually occurs when groups adopt or create an ethnic identity different than the ethnic identity of the human group into which they are born. 
Ethnogenesis can be adopted or imposed. It occurs as a political response to the interaction between different cultural groups, such as the process of colonization or the defense of nationalism. 
Ethnogenesis can also be an individual choice. This autoethnography will explore my personal adoption of a created ethnic identity: the modern day Toltek.

2. Etnobigraphical History:
I was born in Mexico City. My parents are Mexican and American. My father was the only son of my Grandparents. Both of whom were descendants of the first Spaniards to come to what is now Mexico. One of the first invaders to behold the great city of Mexiko-Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City was Juan de Villaseñor y Orozco a Captain in Cortez’s army. His descendants occupied positions of social and political prominence throughout New Spain, the Empire and the current incarnation of Mexico, the Republic. In other words I was born to a family with a deep sense of Mexican History.
My matrilineal origins “McPherson” also have a historical arc, albeit an American one. The McPhersons settled in Ohio sometime in the 18th Century. My American grandparents never wanted to meet their “Mexican Grandchildren” . I am grateful to them, they showed me the meaning of American xenophobia. 

3. Exploration of familial ethnic identities.
Within this familial framework I want to describe my relationships with family members that impacted the construction of my ethnic and personal identity. 
My parents were both mostly absent from my upbringing. They were divorced shortly after my birth. My sense of being “American” comes from weekly interactions with my mother, and several summer trips she, my brother and I took to visit her brother in Ohio. My father, on the other hand, was present in my life everyday, but for only brief periods. A busy man who was charged with “modernizing” Mexican bureaucracy. He was an honest and hardworking official, involved in a sysiphean task. My only sibling and I mostly interacted with him early in the mornings when we would knock on his bedroom door, wake him up to say goodbye and get our daily allowance before heading out to school. If we were lucky he would come home to dinner around 8 or 9PM. The bulk of our interaction with him happened on weekends when he would take us to different parts of the countryside outside Mexico city or to lunch and a movie. 
The two individuals who most influenced the formation of my self -identity inhabited opposite worlds. I will start with my Grandfather. He was a man of multiple achievements, an Olympian, a long distance runner who represented Mexico in Amsterdam in 1928. He was a social fighter, who founded the largest labor union in Latin America, the Mexican Workers Confederation and the Worker’s University in Mexico City. As a politician he founded the Popular Socialist Party and the weekly opposition newspaper “Combate”. He was a diplomat who represented Mexico against the USA in international arbitration courts on land disputes. Also a statesman, he presided over the only Mexican government industrial complex, other than the national oil industry, to ever show a profit in Mexico. By the time I was 13, he had retired from politics and set out to write his memoirs. When I was 16 he had published his memoirs and spent his days visiting people, and writing pieces for the newspapers. He enjoyed taking me along to some of these meetings and luncheons with his friends; intellectuals, journalist and politicians. It was those afternoons that I spent with my grandfather that had the greatest impact on my intellectual development and sense of self. He was a Mexican nationalist, committed to a better future for all and very unconcerned with personal profit or monetary gain. He wrote in his memoirs: “Man can only rise above himself when he links his life to a purpose that elevates him over the pettiness of material interests.” (Villaseñor, 76)
The other person who was extremely influential in my upbringing was Doña Manuela Ramos. An Indian from central Mexico. She worked for us from the time my brother and I were toddlers until I left my father’s home. She became my Mother by virtue of her love for us, her attention, her concern and most importantly her guidance. At some point early in my teenage years I broke the social barrier between us and decreed that since she couldn’t have lunch with us in the dinning room, I would have lunch with her in the kitchen. The kitchen was a forbidden room, a cultural holdout from other times; men simply did not go into the kitchen. This small sign of defiance opened the door to a relationship that endures today. Doña Manuela taught me how indians thinks and how they construct a vision of community and cultural continuity in the face of oppression. While my Grandfather was teaching me how to understand the social and political structures of modern Mexico, Manuela was teaching me how indians resists those social and political structures.
But at this point in my life I was in fact lost in the Laberynth of Solitude. The Mexican identity as expressed by the poet Octavio Paz in his seminal book of the same name: 
“The Republic is not composed of criollos, indians and mestizos, as with great love for shades and respect for the aberrant nature of the colonial world was specified by the “Laws of the Indies”, but by men, simply. And alone.” (my translation, Paz, 97)
In other words after Mexican insurgents defeated the Spaniards and established the Republic, they fell under the spell of the European Illumination, that is they adopted the abstract concept of universal man, devoid of history, and disconnected from nature. (Subirats, 1997)
Since its independance Mexico has attempted to copy european economic, social and political models, and at the same time It views its indigenous past, at best, as a tourist attraction and at worst, as the chain that keeps Mexico from achieving developed status. (Bonfil, 2002).
I believe this denial of the Indian is self-defeating. By trying to erase their indianess Mexicans negate themselves. In truth Mexico has a millenarian culture, that has survived, albeit, fragmented and reduced, through 500 years of continuing ethnocide.
My exit door from the self negating laberynth of solitude, was my “Americanness”. In 1985 I moved to the United States. I ended up in NYC. Here in the great anomie of the iron city I pursued the profession of freelance photographer. With my camera as passport, I became a humanist photographer, a secular citizen of the world. 

4. A historical analysis of the created identity that I have adopted.
To understand the world view that is framed by Toltequity we must put our preconceptions aside and resist comparisons between Toltequity and western or eastern traditions. (Photo). 
The Toltek were a Nawatl speaking civilization that flourished between the 10th and 12th century CE. They settled in the geographic area previously occupied by the Teotiwakan culture. The Toltek fused many states in central Mesoamerica and created a militaristic confederacy ruled from their capital Tolan, (Land of Toltek). They were accomplished engineers, astronomers, mathematicians and scientists. Their influence spread establishing a cultural continuity through out Mesoamerica. They are regarded as the acme of Mesoamerican civilization by many scholars, historians and arquelogists. 
During the last part of the 20th century, several writers have written about the spiritual practices of the Toltek. They claim to be inheritors of the great Toltek traditions, or in some cases, their descendants.They have sought to discover and recreate toltek ontology, their way of thinking. Some of these writers have gained worldwide renown like; Carlos Castañeda, Victor Sanchez, Don Miguel Ruiz and Frank Diaz. 

5. The personal experiences that led to the adoption of a created ethnicity.
In 1987 I met Jose Membrillo, a Toltek indian and spiritual warrior in the tradition of the ancient Toltek civilization. He was born in the shadow of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotiwakan. For almost 4 years he taught me the Toltek knowledge and shamanic practices that he learned from his grandmother a traditional healer and shaman. During those years we spent hundreds of hours talking about and engaged in shamanic practices. Some of these included highly controlled and ritualized use of natural entheogens, and exercises of extreme physical endurance. But mostly they were exercises of meditation, observation and shifting of awareness. These practices are called Kinam. The goal of Kinam is threefold:
• a mastery of awareness: To take action and assume responsibility for one’s life.
• a mastery of transformation: To sharpen our only link to Spirit ; our intuition. The Toltek warrior becomes impeccable by empirically testing his/her intuition, banishing all doubts and following the path with heart.
• a mastery of intent: this is achieved by practicing the art of gaining consciousness in our dreams and thus directing our dreams in accordance to our will. 
Kinam forms part of Toltekayotl (Toltek heart), or Toltequity, the core values and principles of the Toltek culture. 


6. A brief summary of the cultural and social values of the created identity and the personal implications for the author.

Tolteks recognize that we are not passive receivers of a culture or tradition that is final and immutable. I have to do my part to contribute to this knowledge and tradition. This is the simple recognition of the dynamic nature of the universe; movement, change, evolution, growth are immanent to all humans and to all life. (Diaz, 2004).
Tolteks have constructed five principles known as the path of Knowledge and they are embodied in the Wewetaltoli, “The Elders Words”
• Shoshou’ki: Freedom, this is the distancing from material conditioning.
• Kinamiktia: Balance: This is the act of realizing that all things have a duality and that there are no absolute rules to anything, but rules vary according to the dynamic interaction between those dualities. 
• Ixtlamati: To guide oneself purely by personal experience. This is the characteristic principle of Toltequity because it assumes self responsibility. It acknowledges that the measure of creation is the individual and not the social group, so it is the individual and not the social group who can accumulate experiences that lead to deserving honor or recognition.
• Nanamiki: The acknowledgment that we are on Earth only for a brief time. The perception of death is important because it helps us get rid of superstitious beliefs. 
• . Wewekoltia: To value the advice of the elders and the ancestors. They preceded us on this earth and contributed to our body of human knowledge . (Diaz, 2004)

Toltequity recognizes the validity of the Mesoamerican civilizational process. Toltequity is a pluralist project, anyone can become a Toltek.

TLASO KAMATI. thank you.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo, Mexico Profundo Reclaiming a Civilization, University of Texas Press, 2002, Austin, TX.
• Diaz, Frank. Kinam Antiguas Practicas Toltecas. Editora Alba, 2002, Mexico, DF.
• Paz, Octavio , El Laberinto de la Soledad y Otras Obras, Penguin Ediciones, 1997, NY, NY.
• Subirats, Eduardo, Linterna Magica, Vanguardia, Media y Cultura Tardomoderna, Ediciones Siruela, 1997, Madrid, España.
• Villaseñor, Victor Manuel, Memorias de un Hombre de Izquierda, Editoral Grijalbo, 1976, Mexico, DF.

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