Mayan art, Mayan land

Corn harvest showing the colors of Mayan lands, in Buctzotz, Yucatán. Photo © Haizel de la Cruz.

Opinion • Haizel de la Cruz • August 22, 2025 • Leer en castellano

The milpa (a food garden based around maize crops that relies on ancestral techniques), the community kitchen, and assembly halls are places of learning for people of all ages in the Yucatán Peninsula, in southern Mexico.

On May 3, the Autonomous iik’naj Cultural Center was inaugurated in the city of Ticul, Yucatán. The Center combines all three vital learning spaces—milpa, kitchen, and assembly hall—in hopes of becoming a place people can gather, reflect, and share ideas and artistic tools and techniques. The most important goal is to strengthen our Mayan identity.

The inauguration began with the “Chon Bolometik” exhibition, by Tzotzil Maya artist Carlos Miguel Guayampat'z. Then there was a screening of the short film Kool which was created by the Assembly of Defenders of the Mayan Territory, Múuch' Xíimbal (We Walk Together). We sold books by Mixtec writer Francisco López Bárcenas, as well as stickers, paintings, prints, T-shirts, and notebooks.

In terms of its operation, the iik'naj Cultural Center is a self-sustaining and autonomous space. We have held photography workshops for children and adults, and all activities are carried out on a voluntary basis: participants contribute what they can according to their means. Maybe it's corn, an iswaj (sweet or savory tortilla), an arepa (sweet tortilla), an atole (drink), pumpkin seeds, fruit, or whatever they wish to share with others.

The first fruits are shared in a big celebration where all beings who made the harvest possible come together in Buctzotz, Yucatán. A girl takes roasted corn from the table that was previously shared with the Yuum (guardians). Photo © Haizel de la Cruz.

Learning together

In the milpa, we learn that a small corn plant can germinate, but first it must be welcomed and supported by the earth, the rain, and the sun, who help it poke out of the soil. We learn that our relationship with nature is familial, and our values are strengthened through sight, sound, voice, and memory. Through this space, we hope to sow a seed (i’inaj, iik’naj), so that our dignity and identity can flourish, and our close relationship with nature can be strengthened.

The word i'inaj translates as seed. But Mayan poet Pedro Uc suggests that it comes from the words iik' (wind) and Naj (house). 

“Iik'naj is what really makes sense, iik'+naj, (wind, energy, life + house), and for the Mayan farmer, for the sower, for the Mayan community, a seed is a house of energy, a house for all of life,” Uc told me. “A seed is like to us, like our living body. We are houses of energy, of breath, of life.”

In the kitchen, we make fire, which offers us its flames, its heat, its strength, its intensity, its boldness—that daring spirit we have as children and teenagers when we contemplate the life that lies before us. Over time, that fire gradually subsides, or rather, it is gradually extinguished by others.

We share our thoughts around the kitchen hearth, and talk about the concerns facing our community. The iik'naj Cultural Center aims to keep a flame burning that can give us hope in the face of the fire of adversity, to feed our hearth with wood from the jabín tree.

Assemblies are gatherings of diverse people. There are trees surrounding the Center, and beneath them, in the shade, children, women, men, our grandmothers, grandfathers, dogs, chickens, birds, and even pigs gather. Everyone comes to listen, give their opinion, ponder, and discuss. This space aims to be a forum for dialogue, not to impose a single discourse, but to build one together with our vision, our thoughts, and our Mayan dignity.

Pumpkin harvest in Buctzotz, Yucatán. Photo © Haizel de la Cruz.

The principles of autonomous culture

The iik’naj Cultural Center has five main pillars. First, all activities should be focused on strengthening our Mayan identity and autonomy. Second, the space is independent; it is not a civil association, much less a space funded by political parties. Third, no religion is promoted: our space is not guided by proselytizing or sectarian aims.

Fourth, the Center fosters and defends our relationship with the land, our wisdom, our festivities, our history, our faith, our culture, and our arts. Defending our territory is defending our Mayan way of life.

And finally, the space actively promotes defending our rights as Mayan communities, be it through organizing, legal action, public actions and protests seeking to build toward those rights. This is especially important in the face of land theft and threats like genetically modified soybean monoculture, pig farms, high-impact tourism, wind and photovoltaic energy, the misnamed Mayan train, the Heineken brewery, and a retirement home for the Secretary of Defense in Bacalar.

We urgently need to condemn these incursions in our territory through our art.

The ears of corn with the largest kernels are picked to select the seeds that will be sown the following year in Buctzotz, Yucatán. Photo © Haizel de la Cruz.

For Mayan life

As Mayan women and men, we have a unique perspective on reality. We listen to nature, its sounds, its forms, its space, its language, its organization. Our outlook, and way of life, is Mayan.

When large-scale projects harm nature, they hurt everyone: in Mayan thinking, life is shared among all beings who inhabit the earth, and our relationship is one of family and communion. The iik’naj Center aims to strengthen that Mayan perspective—to see ourselves in it and recognize the meaning of our struggle, and why we fight for our land. And of course, to reflect on the meaning of our land through conversations, workshops, and exhibitions.

We are committed to art because we believe it is a key aspect of social struggle. In art, we see nature in all its forms and intricacies—that is the Mayan perspective.

It hurts us when nature is threatened. That is when we use art as a critical tool for protest. At the iik’naj Autonomous Cultural Center, we believe there can be no Mayan art without Mayan territory.

The photos accompanying this article are from the series Meeyjul Kool, created by the the author and taken in 2019 and 2020 in a community called Buctzotz (House of the bat), in the northeast of the state of Yucatán.