Blue Maize Pollinates IIPE’s Network by Feeling and Thinking: The 2022 Excursion to San Mateo Tlaltenango, Mexico

Abstract

We seek to articulate aspects of the emerging ecological relational paradigm for peace through recounting an excursion day spent at pueblo originario San Mateo Tlatenango, Mexico with international peace educators attending in a week-long International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) Mexico 2022. This immersive experience aimed to generate new learning through cross-pollinating ancient wisdom and modern knowledge embodied in the mixture of participants.

Alejandra Barrera’s family lives San Mateo Tlatenango where generations have farmed, continuing communal traditions that carry forward ancient wisdom.  Blue maize refers to her grandfather’s corn seeds and plants used by community women to make tortillas at the center of our shared feast. The IIPE excursion was organized in part as Alejandra’s doctoral research in ecological/political economy at the University of Vienna. Alejandra Barrera and Janet Gerson found fertile epistemological ground in bringing together academic scholarship, peace pedagogy, and indigenous community life. IIPE participants and two communities of pueblo originario all contributed to the cross-pollination that took place that day. 

Two concepts, sentipensar and mycelium network, inform our reflection: Sentipensar is the Latin American concept of feeling-thinking (Escobar, Borda) at the heart of  IIPE Mexico. Sentipensar invites an opening of capacities and sensibilities, informing not only human-to-human relations, but importantly expanding human relations’ potential for recognizing and valuing the well-being of all Earth’s living systems.

Mycelium network is what fungi biologist Merlin Sheldrake calls “entangled life”.  Mycelium networks are made of webs of stretching, growing root fibers, each reaching toward resources and relationships they need. This metaphor reflect IIPE peace pedagogy that aims to generate dynamic global relational network of individuals engaged in peace practices that simultaneously preserves individuality while forming non-hierarchical, flexible .and transforming interconnections.