Oaxaca

He wrote this great book on deciphering Mexica glyphs.

And the story that José Argüelles tells is that he was in the, the weaving communities in Teotitlán, in Oaxaca, and he saw this image being sold in the marketplace on the, the blankets.

And he's like, "This image is beautiful." So he bought it and decided, "Well, this is gonna be Hunab Ku.

This is gonna be the image that I promote as Hunab Ku." So Gordon was kind enough to, uh, send me an email, and I think this story is hilarious.

He says, "In the 1970s, I was preparing to write my dissertation for Yale, and I spent the summers of 1975 and '76 in the valley of Oaxaca studying the inscriptions at Monte Albán.

In my spare time and to supplement my work, I collected folk beliefs in Teotitlán that seemed to relate in some fashion to pre-Hispanic Zapotec culture.

While there, I spent much time interviewing weavers and chatting with the people tending the stalls in the marketplace.

"This was the design I gave to one of the weavers in Teotitlán.

Over Christmas break this year, I did an eat, pray, love thing, and I went to a surf camp in Mexico.

Where? In Puerto Escondido, down in Oaxaca.

Oh, shit, man.

It is like what? Mexican Mavericks in the summer, but in the winter, it is like- Very pleasant.

I'm just in Kaiser with an ever rotating person that I just kind of see when I see.

It's not the best for my life, but their only quote unquote doctor is a doctor in Oaxaca.

That's their quote unquote doctor as far as I'm concerned.

And then the people here are just rotating.

And the nature is very different, no? It was real camp.

You know what I was telling Fernando? So for those of you who don't know, you guys know Paulina and I very well.

We were born and raised in Oaxaca.

And that's my point of reference for everything.

You kind of alluded to some of the work you've done, but what did you study and what did it teach you?

So, yes, I work in indigenous Zapotec community in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, and a lot of my work to date there has been focused on.

cooperation and how social norms and institutions, which I would define, or in cultural evolution, we would define as kind of packages of norms that govern certain domains of life, you know, community organization, the institutions of governance that Tim was talking about in the Roman Empire versus the Greek societies, you know, economic exchange, things like this.

Anyways, how social norms and institutions structure cooperation within communities, um, And I did this in a few different ways.

One of those institutions is called Gosona, and it's a reciprocal aid institution where villagers will provide support to each other during celebrations, for example, bringing food, cash, a little coffee, something like that, and also doing labor for the hosts of the celebration, and then that help is reciprocated later.

And then the second is sort of a set of traditional political institutions called usos y costumbres, by which the community self-governs and provides public goods.

So the communities in Oaxaca, they're kind of semi-autonomous from the Mexican government.

They self-govern.

In some cases it's, uh, you know, old tor- tortillas or tostadas.

Um, the animal crackers are very common, um, not only in Puebla for mole Poblano, but also in, um, in Oaxaca.

Um, and then in some places, like along the Gulf Coast, they actually use corn.

Um-