Our guest blogger today is Elena Huegel, a teacher, storyteller and artist who facilitates group learning experiences for peace and environmental education at the Institute for Intercultural Studies and Research in Chiapas, Mexico. Having served in Latin America for over twenty years, Elena coordinates the Roots in the Ruins: Hope in Trauma program in central and southern Mexico, as well as in Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Nicaragua.
My father, who grew up in the Anahuac valley of Mexico City, recently shared a special word in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people. The word is nepantla, which means the ‘between times’ or the ‘land between lands.’
The blog Nepantlena: Exploring Boundaries, Edges and Borders offers this description of the Nahuatl word, nepantla:
These edges, boundaries and borders are dynamic places of transformation. While they are unstable, unpredictable and precarious, they are also places of greater diversity and therefore greater potential for creativity, innovation and productivity. These liminal spaces provide ‘dynamic spaces for transformation, community and social action.’ Or as the beloved Chicana author and cultural pioneer, Gloria Anzaldua puts it, ‘nepantleras facilitate passages between two worlds.’
— Elena Huegel from “Where Heaven Caresses Earth” in Neither Here nor There: The Many Voices of Liminality
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