CC BY
6УДК 32.019.5
АЛЬТЕРНАТИВНАЯ КОНЦЕПЦИЯ РАЗВИТИЯ КАК ВЫЗОВ КОНЦЕПЦИИ ЗАПАДА: КОСМОВИДЕНИЕ НАУА
Аспирант
Калифорнийского университета в Риверсайде, Риверсайд, Соединенные Штаты Америки.
Фернандо Давид Маркес Дуарте ORCID: 0000-0001-5653-5002 fdmdj@hotmail. com
Аннотация
Цель. Концепция развития, доминирующая в Латинской Америке, была навязана и формировалась со времен западной колонизации. Эта концепция усилила неравенство и маргинализацию большинства людей. Потому коренное население должно обратиться к собственным источникам, чтобы предложить альтернативную концепцию развития, учитывающую собственную культуру.
Методы. В этой статье с помощью деколониального подхода рассматриваются различные приемы, которые науа использовали для создания и социализации своих знаний, основы их пантеистического космовидения.
Результаты. Научная новизна. Практическая значимость. Знания науа коренятся в опыте и образе жизни группы, космическом видении. Важно содействовать переосмыслению коренными народами доминирующих западных концепций развития. Благодаря этому мы можем двигаться к обществам с большей социальной справедливостью и равенством. Как утверждал Астор Агилера, различные общества должны быть поняты с учетом их специфического космовидения и концепций, которые с точки зрения западного мирови-дения могут восприниматься как "иррациональные". Западные концепции были ошибочно приняты за общие и универсалистские, но они не годятся для понимания альтернативных обществ.
Ключевые слова: коренные народы; космовидение; знания; развитие.
Конфликт интересов: не заявлен.
RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT FROM INDIGENOUS SOURCES TO CHALLENGE THE WESTERN CONCEPTION: THE NAHUAS COSMOVISION
PhD student
of the University of California Riverside, Riverside, United States of America.
Fernando David Márquez Duarte
ORCID: 0000-0001-5653-5002 fdmdj@hotmail.com
Abstract
Objective. The conception of development that is dominant in Latin America was imposed since the invasion and colonization of the west. This conception has only
increased inequality and marginalization of most people. My main argument in this report is that we have to analyze and look to our own realities and sources to propose an alternative conception of development that considers our own cultures, especially indigenous groups.
Methods. For this paper I study the different processes that Nahuas used to create and socialize their saberes with a decolonial approach, as well as the base of the Nahuas pantheistic cosmovision that supports their saberes.
Results. Scientific novelty. Practical significance. The saberes that I will analyze in this paper are the use of the process of "taking face" by the tlamatinimeh, and the calpulli. The Nahuas have an impressive tradition of saberes, which can be considered as knowledge that is rooted in the experiences, cosmovision and way of life as a group. It is relevant to understand and promote indigenous saberes to rethink western dominant conceptions of knowledge and development. By doing this we could advance to societies and realities with more social justice, inclusion, and equality. As Astor Aguilera argues [2010, p. 5], different societies have to be understood by their specific cosmovision and conceptions, because if not everything could seem "irrational" under western terms that have been mistakenly taken as general and universalistic concepts that are inadequate for understanding alternative societies.
Keywords: indigenous peoples; cosmovision; saberes; development; Abya Yala.
Conflict of Interest: No conflict of interest is declared by the authors.
Introduction
The Nahuas have an impressive tradition of saberes, which can be considered as knowledge that is rooted in the experiences, cosmovision and way of life as a group. Due to the length of the existence of Nahuas and the different indigenous group that constitute this broader group, it is relevant to analyze their saberes throughout their existence.
For this paper I study the different processes that Nahuas used to create and socialize their saberes with a decolonial and intercultural approach. The saberes that I will analyze in this paper are the use of the process of "taking face" by the tlamatin-imeh, the saberes of the Tonalámatl, and the system of the calpulli.
It is relevant to understand and promote indigenous saberes to rethink western dominant conceptions of knowledge and development. By doing this we could advance to societies and realities with more social justice, inclusion and equality, considering that knowledge production is based on the relations between different actors, including power relations [Bell, 1992, p. 14]. As Astor Aguilera argues [Astor-Aguilera, 2010, p. 5], different societies have to be understood by their specific cosmovision and conceptions, because if not everything could seem "irrational" under western terms that have been mistakenly taken as general and universalistic concepts that are inadequate for understanding alternative societies. Thus, I will discuss the dominant conceptions of development and why we need to rethink them.
The Nahuas are the biggest indigenous group in México and are currently extended throughout the country, especially concentrated in the center-south region of the country; according to the 2020 census there are more than 1.7 million of individuals [INEGI, 2021]. This indigenous group was the dominant civilization in Mesoa-mérica by the time of the invasion of Spain, and is composed of smaller indigenous groups that share one common language, which is Náhuatl.
Development discussion
The debate of what is development and how to achieve it has been present in the last few decades. Currently the international measure of development that is more accepted is the human development index (HDI). It is considered by different authors from the Abya Yala that this measure and other attempts to rethink development aren't adequate to different societies and different realities and have been imposed from "developed" to "developing" countries, and the HDI doesn't consider the realities of marginalized groups such as indigenous groups, afrolatinxs, and other minorities, that is why contextualized, qualitative and decolonial research, like this one is relevant and important [Caffentzis & Federici, 2015; Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) / Fondo para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas de América Latina y el Caribe (FILAC), 2020; Díaz Gómez, 2001; Moreschi, 2013; Ojeda Medina & Villareal Villamar, 2020].
It is worth noting that Abya Yala is a term created by the Guna/Puna indigenous group, which is in what is now Panamá and it can mean "land in maturity" and is used by several indigenous groups and decolonial authors to refer to Latin America [Del Valle, 2015].
The current idea of how the socioeconomic system and how development is conceived hasn't solved the problems of inequality, poverty, environment destruction, violence, low levels of health, education, and social and political participation and inclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic didn't only show that the health systems in several countries are not inclusive and not equal, especially in countries where the health system is privatized; it also exacerbated issues like food insecurity, workers' rights violations, lack of social security, police violence, unequal education opportunities, mar-ginalization of people with disabilities, to mention a few [Atzeni, 2020; Cook et al., 2020; van Barneveld et al., 2020].
Development was initially considered a synonym of economic growth, using the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as the indicator of development. This generated economic reductionism in the analysis of development [Boisier, 2004; Prats, 2006]. Considering development only in macroeconomic terms is extremely limited because it doesn't explain what individuals do with their income and doesn't actually show the acquisition power of families, moreover, ignores non-economic indicators that are important to understand in a comprehensive way the quality of life of people, like their culture and traditions.
Currently, one of the conceptions of development mostly used internationally is the one of "human development". This is defined as the set of opportunities that each individual requires to achieve the wellbeing that they consider valuable [UNDP, 2020]. Operatively this approach to development considers three dimensions: income, health and education. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) adopted this conception to measure development internationally, that as discussed previously have its flaws, especially not considering differentiated realities such as the indigenous groups realities in the Abya Yala, and leaving out important dimensions such as the democratic dimension.
The three dimensions included in this conception of development are necessary to achieve the ultimate goal of wellbeing (which I will discuss in the next paragraphs); however, they are not sufficient. This idea of development and wellbeing was posed by Amartya Sen. For Sen (1993), each individual decides its own path to the development they want to pursue, in order to achieve a well-being level that they consider
adequate. Thus, it is impossible to talk about individuals choosing their own path to development if we don't talk about democracy and participation in public decisions. On the other hand, it is important to consider a differentiated collective path to development for oppressed groups, such as indigenous groups, racial minorities, people with disabilities, etc.
A different approach is the "democratic development", which refers to the process of constitution of politically active citizens and to the amplification of participation in public issues [Rivas, 1996]. Moreover, participatory instruments are considered essential to achieve this kind of development, as well as democratic consolidation [Dagnino et al., 2006]. This approach can be used to complement the human development index, because it includes what the index lacks, which is the democratic development dimension.
Regarding this issue, Galtung (1971) argued that democracy can be seen as the condition for exercising effective control over periphery, this has also been argued by Rueschemeyer et al. (1992) and by Coronil (2004). Additionally, liberal democracy is the condition for global elites to control the oppressed, because average citizens are not directly included in the decision-making process, which is dominated by the political elites; a more inclusive democratic system would be a participatory democracy (Barber, 2003; Pateman, 1970), in which the citizens participate directly in public decisions, by instruments such as referendum, plebiscite, public consultations, participatory workshops, citizen assemblies, citizen accountability councils, thus, fostering democratic development and putting the citizens in the center of the public decision-making processes [Márquez Duarte, 2018].
Other conceptions that are relevant to discuss are decolonial ideas from the Abya Yala, such as sentipensar land, which could be translated into "feel-think" as an indivisible conception to rethink how we relate and interact with life in our world: animals, plants, rivers, forests, jungles, mountains, etc. Escobar (2016) presents this conception based in the experiences and ontologies of indigenous communities that live by the rivers in what is now Colombia. To Sentipensar land and nature parts from a differentiated ontology and a cosmovision that is against a capitalist, profiteering and western vision of the world; while a western vision conceives land and nature as a resource to control, exploit and sell, sentipensar understands that all beings in the world complement each other and are necessary to maintain life, that is why balance is needed. These ideas have also been poised by other indigenous ontologies of groups in the Amazonas in Brazil with the conception of "perspectivism" presented by Viveiros de Castro (1998), where animals and humans have the same type of soul, the only thing that changes is our skin that is considered as a clothing, but both are the same being, so they should live in respectful coexistence. The idea of coexist respectfully with other beings is present in other indigenous groups where dedication rituals to the forest and the animals were very common, as well as hunting to survive and not as a sport or to appropriate land or resources, such as in the Mayas [Brown & Emery, 2008; Monaghan, 1998].
Another relevant decolonial conception from the Abya Yala is Buen Vivir [Gudynas, 2016, p. 7], which could be translated into "living well". This conception comes from the Quichua and Aymara idea of Sumak Kawsay, which can be translated into a "good and integral life" and "good coexistence", respectively, thus the term refers to a good life with coexistence of everyone in a balanced way in community [Cabnal, 2010, p. 17]. Buen Vivir bases in an harmonic and respectful coexistence with
nature in a biocentric approach, being opposite to a western anthropocentric one, which wrongfully thinks that nature is something that should be privatized and exploited; this conception also recognizes that there are different ways of having a good life and there is no universal conception, thus, it recognizes the diversity of saberes and ontologies [Ávila & Pohlenz, 2012; Gonzales, 2014; Gudynas, 2016]. Other de-colonial wellbeing conception from the Abya Yala is the idea of Gara wachi inaropo nai gawich of the Rarámuri indigenous groups in northern México, which can be translated into "living in the right path". This conception refers to living well with happiness and harmonic coexistence with not only the physical world but also the spiritual and social world, which according to the Rarámuri requires endurance; it is also about self-determination and equality to decide on their own wellbeing idea for their community [Loera-González, 2016; Loera-Gonzalez, 2014]. Finally, we have the indigenous conception of comunalidad, which is the system in which indigenous communities in Oaxaca (México) live, that was coined by the Ayuujk indigenous group. The elements that define comunalidad (that can be translated into communality) are: land as mother and territory, decision making directly in community assemblies and community work as authority exercising [Díaz Gómez, 2001, p. 368]. In the system of comunalidad, anyone can be part of the community, as long as they adhere to the organization and decision making structure in a direct participatory way in assembles, with the tequio, faenas and the cargos system [Moreschi, 2013, p. 11]. Tequio is a tradition where members of the community conduct community work for free and the faenas are religious festivities where everyone in the community works together to offer a feast for everyone and towards public works [González, 2016, p. 117]. In the cargos system, everyone in the community can be elected for a traditional cargo, which is an honorary and unpaid leadership position in indigenous communities [Rodríguez, 2017].
With all these conceptions of development and wellbeing analyzed, the crucial question appears: What conception of development can we learn from Nahuas to have an alternative to the western conception of development from the Abya Yala?
Most of the development conceptions analyzed concern mainly economic aspects, even conceptions like human development, have income as a central part, thus, following a western, and to some extent, colonialist conception of development, imposed from the "developed world" to the "developing world" or "third world". It is then necessary to conceive decolonial ways of thinking development for the Abya Yala, from the Abya Yala as the conceptions that have been discussed earlier.
Decoloniality and Interculturality
Decoloniality and Interculturality are theoretical and methodological approaches that surge from the oppressed groups of the Abya Yala as a form of resistance and challenge to western colonial oppression; both are horizontal knowledge creating processes, instead of a rigid hierarchical vertical process common in the dominant western colonial approaches. Furthermore, decolonial and qualitative studies challenge the dominant quantitative universalistic fallacy that ignores the contextual knowledge of research and imposes a false universality in different realities. As several authors have shown, universalistic approaches of development reach flawed conclusions that are viewed only from a narrow western perspective [Bell, 1992; Esping-Andersen, 1990; Mainwaring & Pérez-Liñán, 2007; Merry & Wood, 2015; Rueschemeyer et al., 1992; Sartori, 1970; Szanton, 2004; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012].
Another important element of my research approach is the conception of saberes, which are the thought of groups composed of decolonial knowledge, experiences, ancient philosophies and in relation with all life in the world through a coherent world view. Due to that and to the marginalization that saberes have suffered by hands of western knowledge and science [Delgado & Rist, 2016; Pérez Ruiz & Argueta Vil-lamar, 2011], saberes have to be differentiated from western knowledge. Saberes is a horizontal conception that is built by different members of the oppressed groups in which they surge in a dialectical and more inclusive way.
Decoloniality explains different forms of colonial oppression and challenges them, like coloniality of power, coloniality of knowing, coloniality of being and colo-niality of mother nature. Coloniality of power refers to the structure imposed by the western colonialism in which a hierarchization based on race and ethnic groups dominates the institutions and is perpetuated by the State. Coloniality of knowing refers to the western forms of science and knowledge imposed in the "Global South" that marginalized any other forms of science and saberes that don't comply with western terms. Coloniality of being refers to the dehumanization of all people that are different than the image of the western colonial "modernity" imposed and considers them inferior, which is clearly linked with the coloniality of power. Finally, the coloniality of mother nature refers to the ethno- and anthropocentric idea that western colonialism imposed, where humans as considering superior, appropriate, destroy and privatize all life in the planet (animals, plants, oceans, rivers, mountains, forests, jungles, etc.) [Cajigas-Rotundo, 2007; Delgado & Rist, 2016; Dussel, 2020; Ferrao Candau, 2010; W. Mignolo, 2018; Quijano, 2015; C. Walsh, 2007, 2008, 2018b, 2018a].
Decoloniality then can be understood as a process of humanization and liberation of the individuals and societies (in both levels), where the objective is to fight to reach the emancipation of the multiple forms of western colonial oppression [Dussel, 1973; Freire, 1970; C.E. Walsh, 2013]. Another crucial element for decoloniality is the decolonization of knowledge. Decolonizing knowledge implies epistemic disobedience, which is the process of delinking from the so-called "universal" and "objective" knowledge. This decolonial alternative, parts from the idea that the caring, preservation and regeneration of saberes and indigenous ways of life is more important than capitalist production. It can also be argued that it implies an alternative movement, where the market epistemology and the globalization project of universalizing the capitalist modernity are challenged [Arévalo, 2013; Grosfoguel, 2007; W. Mignolo, 2008, 2018; W.D. Mignolo, 2009, p. 160, 161; Santos, 2011].
On the other hand interculturality refers to the process of reaching a cross-cultural understanding and way of life, parting from an equality of conditions to advance to a dialogue of saberes to build really intercultural societies and realities, where cooperation and solidarity guide the way of life, in order to reach this interculturality we promoted our own thought from the experiences, realities, saberes and oppressions suffered in the Abya Yala, as the Zapatistas have argued, to reach a world where all the worlds have a place [Agathangelou & Ling, 2004; Aguirre Rojas, 2018; Castro-Gómez, 2007; Delgado & Rist, 2016; EZLN, 1994; Pérez Ruiz & Argueta Villamar, 2011; Routledge, 2002].
Nahuas cosmovision and saberes
The first aspect to discuss is Nahuas cosmovision. Cosmovision encompasses not only worldview which refers to cognitive and existential aspects of a society to
understand the order of existence [Bell, 1992, p. 26]. It also encompasses cosmogony (origin of creation and cosmos), cosmography (composition of the universe and existence), cosmology (what keeps the balance in cosmos) and the goal of humanity's existence [Florescano, 2000].
The first idea of Nahuas cosmovision is pantheism. Pantheism is the idea that reality and divinity are the same thing, the divine is engrained in all-things in existence: in daily life, in nature, in the cosmos [León Portilla, 2006]. A clear indicator of pantheism in Nahuas is the conception of their creator god Ometéotl; the source of all life. They believed that Ometéotl sustains the nature and the cosmos, that it is connected with everyone and everything, this idea for Nahuas was named i-tlalamanca, where Ometéotl is described as omnipresent. Moreover, Ometéotl is a dual god, both mother and father (Omecihuatl and Ometecuhtli, respectively) and from it the four tezcatlipocas are born (which have been considered as manifestations, as children or as energies of Ometéotl): Quetzalcóatl, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca and Yayau-hqui/Xipe Totec [Gutiérrez & Rico, 1996, p. 23; León Portilla, 2006, p. 9, 10].
Nahuas were deeply concerned with preserving nature and having a collective sense of development and survival. Since in their cosmovision everything is connected, and their gods are part of every living being, the purpose of life for them was to coexist with all living beings. This thought is also suggested by Ometéotl's essence.
Moreover, Nahuas considered the prevalence of collective sense against individual sense. For Nahuas individual salvation could only happen with the salvation of their society and of the cosmos as a whole, this is ingrained in their cosmovision, where sacrifice is a central thought for them; it was even believed that Quetzalcóatl (who was their main deity through a long period) sacrificed itself to give life to the 5th humanity by going to Mictlán (the underworld or the realm of death) to get the bones necessary to give life to the 5th humanity, along with his own blood [Museo Nacional de Antropología, n. d.]. An example of this collective sense is seen in the conceptions of chikualistli and ueuetlaitoli, which refer to union, strength and following the advice from the elderly (which were considered the sages of the community), which imply their collective sense of survival [León Portilla, 2006; Paz, 1950, p. 45; Santiago, 2017, p. 4, 5].
As mentioned before, I analyze the saberes of the process of "taking face", the saberes of the Tonalámatl and of the calpulli system. Regarding "taking face", for Nahuas, saberes is what constituted knowledge, which was composed of what we understand in our brain and what we feel in our hearts. Their sages (wise people that acted as life teachers) were named tlamatinimeh. The tlamatinimeh developed a process that can be considered as a cognitive spectrum that allowed Nahuas to understand what they thought, felt and perceived, which they used to socialize these saberes. For Nahuas, all human thinking had to be rooted in a sensible soil. The Tlamatinimeh described knowledge with the following analogy: "[knowledge] ascends from the deepest of the individual onto the intellectual spheres, as sage ascends from the roots onto the corolla of flowers" [León Portilla, 2006, p. 90].
The idea of "taking face" is crucial to understand Nahuas conception of knowledge. For Nahuas, real saberes had both the rational aspect and the sensible soil, as argued before. They considered that valuable knowledge made them "take face" or "develop face". "Face" for Nahuas can be understood as personality. The face, that each individual shows, is the base of interactions and knowledge for Nahuas.
The terms that Nahuas use related to knowledge have an etymological root that supports their meaning. For example, te-ix-tlamachtianih comes from ix- which means face, and from te- which refers to interaction with others, then te-ix-tlamachtianih means "who enriches or communicates somethings to others faces", referring specifically to wisdom and knowledge. Other terms that complement the previous term are te-ix-cuitianih and te-ix-tomani, which mean "who makes others take face" and "who makes the others develop face", respectively, which implies the role of teacher and even psychologist of the tlamatinimeh [León Portilla, 2006, p. 111, 112].
Moreover, according to contemporary Nahua societies, wisdom and knowledge are articulated in an inseparable process of being, thinking, doing, and knowing all existence (cosmos), in order to adequately live-be in life (for them life was experienced through living and being) which is the goal of knowledge. These saberes are composed by the relations between humans-nature-cosmos [Sevilla et al., 2019], where rituals are used in knowledge building and the adequate formation of moral to live and be right/straight (living a moral life). To live a moral life implied a transformation of "faces molded by words" to form a face [Ryser, 2015; Santiago, 2017].
On the other hand, it is relevant to analyze the saberes of the Tonalámatl. For Nahuas, the Tonalli/Tonalámatl calendar influenced political, social and economic decisions, due to the divinatory attributes that it had. For Nahuas this wasn't only a calendar; it was considered a cosmogram to interpret the material world and predict some aspects of the future, on the other hand it were used to know if the future was going to be positive or negative in order to be prepared [López Austin, 1973, p. 97; Sugiyama, 2010]. The Tonalámatl was interpreted by the Tonalpouhqui, which means "the counter of days", who were a kind of divinatory that told the parents of the new born what the future could hold for the baby, depending on the day, month and year of the birth [Gutiérrez & Rico, 1996, p. 22].
Nahuas believed that the signs of the Tonalli influenced health and life expectancy of every individual; depending on the day a child was born, he/she could have a healthy life or a fragile life, could be invulnerable to magic attacks, etc. Since every sign was represented by a being, these characteristics were related with the being related to the sign [López Austin, 1973, p. 349]. Following the knowledge obtained from the Tonalámatl, Nahuas conceived their future possibilities and parents prepared their newborns for the possible destinies they would face and tried to change some aspects of what the future held for them, by practicing self-consciousness determination and discipline [León Portilla, 2006].
Finally, the calpulli system was the political and social organization system in the Anáhuac Cem, which was the world known and governed by the Nahuas, by the dominant group who were the Mexicans. The calpulli was the basic social structure in ancient Nahua indigenous communities. It was an economically and politically self-determined and self-sufficient collectivity. These units were based on their ancient cosmovision and traditions [López Austin, 1973; Romero Vargas Yturbide, 1988, p. 20].
For decisions that concerned all the groups that composed the Nahua (such as war, education and health) there was a system of different levels where each unit was represented. Each calpulli was represented in the calpólti, which was a regional assembly of calpullis. In turn, each calpólti was represented in the tecuhnechicólli which was the governing assembly of all the Anáhuac territory (the known world for Na-huas); this body was led by the Tlatoáni, who was the leader of the executive power
and by the Cihuacóhuatl, who was the administrator; every decision made was consulted with the assembly [Romero Vargas Yturbide, 1988, p. 22, 35].
The assemblies, whether from each calpulli or the tecuhnechicólli, embodied the will of the collectivity, opposing and harmonizing the tasks and activities of each power, as real check and balances. The system of Nahuas, as well as several indigenous societies around the world, is ruled by indigenous law, also known as consuetudinary law. All systems of this type base on plebiscites and are maintained by the constant repeat of actions [Romero Vargas Yturbide, 1988, p. 26, 120, 121].
Methodology
The present study is an exploratory, qualitative study composed of bibliographical and historical research of ancient and more contemporary sources of Nahuas cosmovision and thinking, as well as approaches to decoloniality and critical intercultur-ality. An extensive research of both academic and historical sources in Spanish and English has been conducted to understand and analyze Nahuas saberes, where the most ancient source of the Nahuas groups known dates back more than 3 000 years. Moreover, my knowledge of the Náhuatl language has helped to use the adequate writing of the Náhuatl words used and understanding the root of the words, considering nonetheless, that there are different variants of the Náhuatl language, and my knowledge is based on the classic and the Huasteca Náhuatl variants.
It is worth noting that this is the first stage of the research and future steps are to conduct ethnographic work in Nahua communities of the Zongolica region of the mountains of Veracruz (southern state of México).
Conclusion
Summarizing the arguments I presented, western thought of development revolves heavily around the economic dimension (income, profiting, economic domination). In contrast, Nahuas present an alternative way of thinking development or even that speaks to an alternative goal of life, which could be other than development. Their cosmovision and saberes regarding pantheism, sacrifice and agency to change our predestined realities shed light on a conception of development that doesn't revolve around an economic dimension, but rather in a collective existence idea, where the survival and wellbeing of each individual is linked with the preservation of all life in the world. In this conception, issues like environmental and social sustainability, achieving equality (not only economically but also socially) and democratic development (rooted in the calpulli system) would be more central to development as a whole. Nahuas ideas are also supported by the decolonial indigenous conceptions discussed before, such as sumak kawsay, sentipensar, comunalidad, etc.
The pantheistic conception of Nahuas discussed in the paper shows that they were and are deeply concerned with preserving nature and having a collective sense of development. Since everything is connected in their cosmovision, and their gods are part of every living being, the purpose of life for them would be to coexist in balance with all living beings. Moreover, this idea brings awareness regarding profiting; profiting at the expense of natural resources and exploitation is oppressive and unsustainable.
On the other hand, the saberes of Tonalámatl lead to the idea of having the capability of changing our "destiny", which is related to the critical and decolonial idea of emancipation, where by developing a critical consciousness, individuals can rebel against the oppression they suffer and advance to emancipate into freedom in a non-oppressive and more inclusive path.
Considering the saberes of the calpulli system, I argue that direct participatory democracy is central to a comprehensive, decolonial, inclusive and more equal conception of development, where people really have the capability of decision making about the wellbeing they want to achieve, recovering the original idea of Sen, which as discussed earlier, was not materialized in the HDI of the UNDP.
Having an alternative conception of development, incorporating the conceptions of indigenous groups such as collectivity, solidarity and self-determination could be the key to let societies reach the wellbeing that they decide is adequate for them with social justice [González Casanova, 2006; Quijano, 1993].
Basing on the Nahuas cosmovision ideas, I propose to rethink development; to have a real freedom of development, to have an alternative way of achieving it, not imposed by the "developed world". I specifically propose an alternative path to development, from and for the Abya Yala, based on the Nahuas ideas discussed, as well as basing in the decolonial indigenous perspectives from the Abya Yala discussed, especially with the conceptions of sentipensar and sumak kawsay regarding coexistence with nature and with the Rarámuri conception of Gara wachi inaropo nai gawich regarding self-determination and decision capabilities, the comunalidad conception of the Ayuujk regarding self-determination, honoring and coexisting in harmony with mother nature. The proposed conception of development would consider five dimensions: health, environment, economics, education and direct-participatory public decision-making. The environment and political decision dimensions (based on the cal-pulli system) that aren't considered in the conventional development conceptions could lead to an alternative path to development, not centered in income or a dominant economic conception, but in a more inclusive and emancipatory path to development that is not entirely ethnocentric. However, it's worth noting that my proposal to conceive development is just one of many alternative ways that can be taken to achieve development, and following a decolonial stance, it shouldn't be applied generically to different societies. Rather, it should be modified and adapted in the terms that each society decides that is better to achieve their own idea of development, and thus, to reach their desired wellbeing.
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