(Un-) (De-) Re-education

With the passage of time, in the mountains of Chiapas, bits of local knowledge begin to trickle into my path. With these simple little facts, my understanding of the indigenous culture here continues to grow, and it forces me to question the system in which I have grown up. I begin to un-educate. I begin to de-educate. I begin to re-educate myself.
On Maize. It is widely accepted that maize production led to the settling of natives in Meso-America and to the transition from nomadic tribes to settled communities. The Maya are often called the 'people of maize.' Maize fields dominate the landscape. Mayan legend has their people actually being born as the fruit of the maize plant. This makes sense after discovering that maize takes nine months from the time it is planted as a seed to the time its fruit can be harvested, the same amount of time as a human embryo.
On Language. The more I speak with the associates of the cooperative and the other community members, the more I realize how important language is. Their language, whichever it may be (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chontal, Chol, etc...), is a part of who they are. This is not something particular to the region - everywhere in the world, our language gives away our culture. Something I learned recently: When I ask 'how are you?', they do not know how to respond. Rather, in Tzotzil, 'how are you' is better translated 'how is your heart?" For the Tzotzil, answering my questions in Spanish is like not speaking from the heart. This was compared to me telling a lie. When I tell a lie - I am not speaking from the heart. This makes me wonder about all of the information I am gathering in my interviews...
On Development. Beginning with the scientific revolution in the 17th century, progress came to be correlated with fixed natural laws in physics, chemistry, and biology. Progress was the accumulated understanding of these static scientific laws and the manipulation of nature to further human achievement. This sense of progress paralleled a new historical science that gave weight to a linear perspective of time. In this new perspective, life took on a new meaning - something that was situated in the context of past and future events - and one could now regard the past as ‘old’ and the future as ‘new.’ This led to the displacement of the past as a source of authority, meaning that progress was separating one’s current condition from their old condition. Perhaps this had to do with a cultural will to separate from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Here in Acteal, and in many other cultures, this change in thinking never took place. There is no distinction between the past, the present and the future. One can think of the Mayan calendar as a set of gears, spinning against each other, each day, month and year set by the linking of clogs on this ever-revolving, ever-cyclical expanse of time. When the elders tell stories of their childhood, it is in the present tense, as if it is occurring to them at that very moment.
The definition of development as bettering one's condition, progressing, separating from the past, holds no value here. What is important is the now. The rain, the trees, the maize, the family. I wonder if these two vastly different ways of looking at life can coexist. Can the always forward-looking, capitalistic, globalizing economy create a space for these cultures and societies to exist? Can the Mexican government allow these people to retain the control of the land, and use it how they please? Can our Western society survive on the path it is walking with the resources that it already has and has taken, or do we need more? Should the communities change their way of thinking and secede their land and their culture to make way for mega-development projects aimed at specialization, urbanization, and consumption? Are conventional education systems put in place in these communities really a step in the right direction, or do they have their own education systems that have allowed them to exist on this land much longer than we have been here? Can we coexist, or does one society need to change?