The words of Manu Puku, this is Banamil Vinajel and what it is for. Spoken in his mother tong Tzotzil, Manu shared this with me in 2018 when I had the pleasure to visit this space for a short period of time.

“I am Manu Puku, from the Mayan culture and heritage. We are in the space of Banamil Vinajel, a place where we decided to share our understandings and knowledge from our elders and nature (as part of our family). With the intent to rekindle our connection with everything that has life, plants, animals and everything we share with them, the land, our land, and the cosmos at the end.  We do this in order to be able to maintain the harmony by sharing and living in this beautiful place. 

There is a lot of ancestral knowledge and wisdom in cultures like ours; you can find them also in the new emerging cultures. We can bring them together, to include, and to be able to share and not forget. Not seeing it as separated entities, animals over here, plants over there, but seeing a unity at the end, there is only one.  The other way around too, we have to recognize and see that it is all part of us, something elemental for our living, and not only ours but all the living creatures. So this is a space where we want to share that knowledge. Knowledge of the Mayan culture but also knowledge from others who want to come, we don’t create differences between people, we are all humans.  

Let all feel included, feel like we belong here, part of this place, without borders, without limits, without division, all one unity. Part of this space, Banamil Vinajel.  A place where we can all learn, all share, and all smile, of course we are also going to have frictions as well as challenges, but then again, that is who we are as humans. But nevertheless, having that consciousness of earth, for what it hosts, for the life it holds in different forms.  At the end we are them, we are part of the earth and the universe. We want is to share this wisdom, from millenarian cultures but also from the new generations.  This space, Banamil Vinajel, is made for sharing and for community, for the Mayan community to share our knowledge in a place open to all.”