Bridging Cultures and Communities Transborder Nahua Futurisms

The community’s collective experience of being forced to self-displace since the early 90’s has led to displaced embodiments of transborder temporalities and spatialities. Nahua Futurity or intemporalities becomes a non-western set of mechanisms to endure these displacements and embody non-linear understandings of the past, present, and future. We left everything behind in the past to defy borders and subsist in the present. In the present we’re always dreaming of a better future, a future in which we return to our past to everything and everyone we left behind. Local traditions keep us strongly rooted to our community, to our land and the instinctual need to keep these traditions alive across borders, time, and space. Nahua futurity in my work are prefigurative imaginaries constructing alternative futures in which we’re resilient and thriving beyond subsisting. 

The Nahua perspective challenges linear narratives, offering visions of renewal and transformation based on Indigenous knowledge and resilience, and addresses contemporary crises through a lens of interconnectedness and balance. Can you discuss the importance of cyclical time, cataclysm and apocalyptic themes in Nahua futurisms?

Looking at the past with full transparency is a fundamental need in order to appreciate better or other futures. Recognizing and holding accountability for colonial genocidal and oppressive patterns in the past allows us to think of healthy renewed temporalities. Nahua cosmology is rooted in a deep connection and appreciation for fertility, healthy agricultural seasons, and abundance of sharing. Every year, Nahua communities offer rituals, prayers, and other manifestations of seeking healthy and rainy agricultural seasons. This ancestral heritage reflects in todays communities understanding and embracing a beginning and end. Death, is embraced as part of life and not necessarily as an evil. We celebrate and embrace our loved ones who have left us, entering a new cycle of remembering and honouring, to never forget. Timekeepers also hold this conceptual understanding of cyclical time and cataclysm at the hands of natural phenomena. The timekeeper for the volcano understands that this greater force has both the potential for cataclysm but also the force to give rain, fertility, and life. These non-linear patterns and relational values inform the way that Nahua futurism constructs temporalities and spatialities. 

Your work entails themes related to Indigenous identity, cultural heritage, social justice, and environmental issues. In relation to the film IMAGINING END TIMES you mentioned that your work includes different concepts of temporality. Can you describe how you incorporate these concepts in some of your key projects on Nahua futurisms? 

My artistic practice and research is constantly looking at the collision of temporalities, amplifying the importance of looking at historical events in order to better understand the present contemporary issues faced by Nahua real lived experiences. The ability to be able to imagine alternative futures is deeply shaped by a critical understanding of the past and present conditions. My works are constantly referencing historical events that have led my community to forced self-displacements. At the same time, my artistic productions seek to amplify and celebrate all that has survived and thrived for more than five hundred years. In imagining and constructing Nahua futurisms, ancestral knowledge and practices continue to be celebrated and nourished. The past is the future and the future is the past. 

Through your art, you interpret Nahua culture and narratives in the contemporary. Can you explain why and how you use various forms of media, including digital art, animation, and film, but also materials, such as textiles and helmets, to address historical and contemporary experiences? 

There’s a broad notion that indigenous communities belong to the past as a result of colonial efforts intending to bury these identities into the forgotten cultural memory of modernity and ‘progress’. Multimedia productions and the materiality in my works has allowed me to visualize these collisions of historical and contemporary experiences in order to build a different sense of our past. To define and celebrate our temporalities is an act of agency. In a way, it feels like I’m trying to constantly capture the real-time experiences of the collective diasporic transborder embodiments and self-preservation efforts. Inevitably, we find ourselves always ‘smuggling’ our traditions, materials, ancestral knowledge, and cultural values in order to reclaim a sense of belonging…on stolen lands. I find myself constantly ‘smuggling’ materials for wearables and sculptural works. My reality is that I was smuggled as a child into the U.S, therefore ‘smuggling’ becomes an agency and a tool for resistance, self-preservation, and to continue to defy borders. 

One of your projects was displayed in the exhibition “Imaginar el fin de los tiempos”. Can you explain what it was and how it connected to the overall topic, and to the exhibitions’s themes annihilation, extinction and apocalypse?

I had two sculptural wearables and one short experimental video as part of “Imaginar el fin de los tiempos” exhibition. These works are part of the ongoing series of videos and wearables depicting futuristic tiemperos (timekeepers). Tiemperos, in Nahua cosmology, are elders who mitigate healthy climate and rain through rituals, offerings, and communication with mountains, volcanos, and local ecosystems. These futuristic tiemperos in my works remind us of past cultural genocidal histories that Nahua communities have survived. These works remind us of everything that has been lost in the past but also celebrating everything that has survived in order to imagine and construct other alternative futures. Futures in which Nahua transborderness has endured and thrived under cultural annihilation histories. 

You are a researcher and artist. During your talk, you mentioned that the arts help to think across systems and create forms of world-making. How does your academic research intersect with your artistic work on Nahua futurisms?

Inevitably as an artist I find it urgent to continue to ask critical questions regarding my community’s experiences. This often leads to various engagements with other academic fields in anthropology, history, archaeology, and cultural studies. It has been fundamental to understand why my community was forced into marginalization and precarious conditions. This has entailed extensive research both in various academic fields but also investing in artistic research that grows with relational values, conversations and much listening within my community. Cholula is a central place geographically but also historically in the colonization of Mexico. Much of the history has been intentionally blurred, erased or violently fragmented. My work recognizes the urgency to heal these histories and the need to heavily research in order better understand how to envision alternative futures. 

Follow up: What methodologies do you use to study and represent Nahua philosophy, mythology, and cosmology? Can you discuss any specific findings or insights from your research that have significantly influenced your creative projects?

Over the past few years I have been paying more attention to local efforts by other academics and creative practitioners in the region of Cholula. At the same time, I have been narrowing down my work to engage directly with elders, family, and friends from my hometown. Because not much of our history is archived or transparently written, I have developed a stronger investment in ancestral knowledge, traditions, and oral engagements to continue to shape my artistic productions. In 2017, I met Don Antonio Analco, a timekeeper from Santiago Xalitzintla, Puebla. He has a direct communication and relationship with the active volcano Popocatepetl, to mitigate for healthy agricultural cycles and rain. Meeting Don Antonio has deeply influenced and inspired my artistic productions to learn more about this millennial Nahua practice and how this informs new works. In January of 2024, I spent about a week up in the national park of Popocatepetl to work on a new video production focusing more on this specific landscape, cosmology, and nuances of futurity. 

In your talk, you addressed issues on migration and decolonization. How do you envision the future of Nahua futurisms within the broader context of Indigenous futurisms and decolonization movements?

My works are constant gestures of counter-homogeneity, amplifying the complex and unique experiences of my community in order to understand the broader issues of immigration and indigeneity. At the core of my work is the urgency to see our histories with more transparency and accountability in order to better understand the needs of current and future generations to thrive and nourish our roots. Futurism in my work emphasize the importance to be able to look at the past with a critical lens. The challenge is to be able to establish visibility, agency, and support for migrant indigenous communities both in Mexico and in the U.S. It’s important to recognize how these communities envision alternative futures and this requires much learning and listening to the many ecosystems embodied collectively on both sides of the border. 

Nahua futurism proposes that societal and environmental crises can lead to renewal and positive transformation. In detail, how do you address contemporary global crises, such as climate change and social justice, through the lens of Nahua futurisms?

Much of the inspiration and energy that feeds my work comes from the resiliency of the diaspora and the many efforts they have taken to sustain hope. It is within these active modes of resiliency that we find renewal and positive transformation for constructing our own futures and alternative non-western home away from home. Unjust forced self-displacements can have emotional, spiritual, and physical violent consequences. Nahua migrants have been building a new sense of home and belonging for almost 30 years. This resiliency and deeply rooted ancestral traditions have allowed the diaspora to build a new vision of their future, a future in which we can sustain our agricultural cycles and nourish cultural sustainable ecosystems across borders. Transborder Nahua futurism reclaims space, time, and land to build new visions of futurity. In the U.S, the diaspora continues to endure the hardships of undocumentedness while celebrating and nourishing our cultural roots. In Mexico, the community continues to fight against land appropriations, for clean water, and to maintain ancestral traditions. Crises and positive transformation coexist simultaneously in real time across the border, across time and space. 

Follow up: Can you share any examples of how Nahua concepts of balance and interconnectedness inform your approach to these crises?

The concept of timekeepers is something that deeply informs ways in which we build relational value with one another and with our surrounding landscapes. A timekeeper is someone who understands the importance of giving thanks to rain and agricultural cycles through communality and collective offerings. This to me stands out as a part of the Nahua cosmology and values that have survived and continue to be nourished as part of our way of understanding each other’s relational value and connection to the land. In my hometown, the most appreciated cultural currency is time, based on relational values. Lending a hand to family and friends is building currency through communality. If you lend your time to help family and friends, you’re building reciprocity for future events in which you will need people to lend you their time. In moments of difficulty and crises, the community helps one another but also comes together unified under any emergency or external threats. The interconnectedness of time, traditions, and connection to the land has allowed for Nahua ancestral knowledge and practices to endure more than five hundred years of marginalization. The diaspora follows these same patterns of communality as currency, apparent in the unified efforts to keep carnivals, gatherings, and traditions alive in the U.S under so much xenophobia, racism, and othering. 

For my community it can be as simple as understanding that we depend on the land for healthy agricultural cycles and as complex as understanding that we embody more than five hundred years of knowledge on working with the land. These millennial embodiments can help us understand the urgency to build more sustainable futures and to protect cultural ecosystems who have nourished this knowledge. A deep respect and honouring of our elders and those who have passed away are protected values that guide us and help us understand how to move forward into better futures. The sacrifice, resilience, and adaptability of those who defied the U.S border inherently becomes a collective gesture of resistance against the state that has caused these forced self-displacements and the state who continues to impose imperialistic practices under a global humanitarian crises of immigration. Amplifying the visibility and narrative of this community becomes the driving force in constructing these imaginaries of migrant Nahua futurisms.

On a rather personal note: What has been your journey in connecting Nahua perspectives and communities while engaging in discussions on decolonization and global challenges? 

This has been an ongoing journey of defiance, resistance, and conviction in addressing these contemporary issues without romanticizing any matters but rather by asking critical challenging questions. The state I’m from, Puebla, is one of the most conservative, racist and classist states in Mexico. This has made it particularly challenging but at the same time more urgent to amplify these issues that indigenous communities continue to endure. This is why I decided to launch an artist residency in my hometown in 2016 in my parents home. A home they’ve built for nearly 30 years but haven’t been able to inhabit it. The spirit of this project always intended to introduce national and international artists to the community, to witness and experience this universe that shapes who I am. This has also been an effort to offer the community workshops, communal projects, and creative means of amplifying our culture and traditions. My work has never been about my individual narrative as a means to advance decolonial efforts but rather relying on communality and highlighting the collective transborder experiences as agency for change. 

Federico's recent research and artistic production pivot around the convergence of transborder indigeneity, the experiences of migrant indigenous diasporas, and the possibilities of Nahua futurisms. His thought-provoking work has garnered recognition on both national and international stages, with independent productions screened at various esteemed film festivals and exhibitions featured in museums and galleries across the globe.

Federico's work has been featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington; Kode Museum in Bergen, Norway; the Museum of Art Såo Paulo in Brazil; the 2023 Larnaca Biennale Home Away From Home;  the 2023 BFI London Film Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; the 2023 Video Art Miden in Kalamata, Greece; the Videnoale.19 at the Bonn Museum of Modern Art in Germany; the Moss Arts Center of Virginia Tech University; the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art; Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City; Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Museum of Art & History Santa Cruz; the Seamar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture in Seattle, Washington; El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in New Mexico; the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada; the Wexner Center for the Arts.