Araceli Rojas

• Phd
• Assistant Professor at University of Warsaw

This article examines the meaning of human rights. First, it describes the notions that are generally understood only from a Euro-Western view and position, which has created a universalising list of rights, reproducing paternalising and vertical power relations. Second, this text discusses double standards practices from the West that have unfairl...

This article reflects upon literacies that are encoded in the landscape and in natural forms, and which describe a different relation between humans and the environment. It criticises the Eurocentric biases that have equated literacy to writing and promoted the opposition of literate vs. oral societies. Although there has been a turn toward conside...

This work presents the results of new archaeological research carried out in Tetzcotzinco, Mexico, with a special focus on its water management. Survey documentation at the site, with the use of 3D photogrammetry, offered new images and maps of water control features, namely, canals, reservoirs, and aqueducts. The integration of these data into a G...

Este artículo tiene como objetivo profundizar en la naturaleza de los calendarios precoloniales en Mesoamérica. A diferencia de otros estudios, aquí se utilizan datos provenientes del uso actual de los calendarios de 260 y 365 días entre los ayöök (mixes) de Oaxaca. Se ofrece una definición sobre la naturaleza y manejo del ciclo de 260 días, cuyos...

Este artículo tiene como objetivo proponer el diseño urbano y del paisaje a partir de un enfoque que hemos llamado la huella del agua. Este enfoque busca recuperar la marca física del paso o presencia del agua en determinada región, además de considerar los valores culturales, históricos y de patrimonio que ella representa para las comunidades en c...

En un pueblo de la zona ayöök (mixe) del estado de Oaxaca se usa desde tiempos inmemoriales un calendario de 260 días para conocer pronósticos sobre enfermedades, sueños, presagios, viajes, próximos matrimonios y, en el pasado reciente, de recién nacidos, así como para pedir fortuna, trabajo y salud, entre otras cosas. Este artículo ofrece datos et...

This document reports on the results of a codicological study on the original Codex Laud. This macroscopical, non-intrusive work was carried out from the 3rd to the 5th of February, 2020, in the conservation studio at the Weston Library of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This work forms part of my project “Oracles of the Other World: Using Ethnogra...

In the past, between the sixth century BCE and the ninth century CE, the Zapotec people managed rainwater in Monte Albán, in the state of Oaxaca, south of Mexico, through terraces, canals, dams, and wells. Water was a keystone of their worldview and ritual practice. Today, this knowledge is in oblivion. Rapid but irregular urbanization threatens th...

Before the arrival of the Spaniards to Mesoamerica, there were books that showed the prognostications and prescriptions of the 260-day calendar and expressed in colours and metaphors much of the religion and worldview of their peoples. Among these books, there were some that served for the interpretation of dreams. Today, from the ten surviving boo...

Codex-style ceramics are considered to be manifestations of the so-called Mixteca-Puebla style, a graphic system that developed in central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Invasion. These ceramics were particularly frequent in Cholula, an important holy city and pilgrimage center. Although this site had a long tradition of painted ve...

Recent investigation among the Ayöök (Mixe) people of Oaxaca showed that the on-going use of a 260-day calendar complements the divinatory technique of casting maize seeds. This paper offers a detailed description of this mantic practice as a means to approach and better understand precolonial divinatory practices and the people who practiced them,...

The casting of maize seeds is a tool used by contemporary daykeepers in the Ayöök (Mixe) area of Oaxaca, Mexico, which along with the prognostications and prescriptions of the 260-day calendar, helps to cure illnesses and afflictions. This divinatory practice was also employed by precolonial tonalpouhque, who were experts of reading the tonalamatl,...

Este artículo presenta un análisis iconográfico e iconológico de los motivos plasmados en los polícromos de Cholula tipo Silvia y Diana, correspondientes al Posclásico medio (1150-1350 d.C.) y cuyos significados se asocian con la simbología del sol según la cosmogonía mesoamericana. Se identificó e interpretó la presencia de círculos rojos como rep...

La presente investigación surge del interés por investigar los antecedentes del Estilo Mixteca-Puebla, específicamente las estructuras cosmogónicas e ideológicas que anteceden al tipo códice en Cholula. En esta ciudad se cuenta con una larga tradición de polícromos, desde el 850/900 d.C. (Lind 1994; Lind et al. 1990; McCafferty 1992, 2001; Suárez 1...