Xook K’iin - Workshop on Ant behaviour
Caminar el Tiempo
A Picture Book Publication, Mexico
As a culmination of over two years of close engagement with the Maya practice of the xook k’iin – a longstanding yet vanishing practice used to predict weather variations and phenomena such as hurricanes, droughts, rains, and winds – Spore is releasing the publication Caminar el tiempo in March 2024.
There is a growing awareness that traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems and techniques for growing food, controlling wildfires, and guarding agricultural and ecological diversity, could help contain the accelerating destruction of the natural world. The pedagogical and cultural tool Caminar el tiempo is the result of a long process of dialogue with our partners in Yucatán such as U Yits Ka‘an School of Ecological Agriculture that is made up of farmers and people dedicated to the care of the land and who shared their learned and lived knowledge of xook k‘iin.
Caminar el tiempo consists of a box containing a set of cards with illustrations and poems inspired by conversations among different communities in Yucatán and beyond, as well as information about xook k’iin and bioindicators. Spore facilitated the process of making the cultural tool with the support and expertise of graphic designer and editor Mónica Bergna, the illustrations of Mariana Alcántara and text revisions by Fanuel Hanán Díaz.
Caminar el tiempo also includes a didactic manual with suggested activities for the cards. Throughout 2024, facilitators Abrahan Collí Tun and Julián Dzul Nah will organize workshops in different communities in Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche to distribute the material and enable multipliers to use it as a pedagogical tool.
