This is Miguel posting...I am presently traveling in Texas doing ceremonial work here while Antonio is continuing his activities back East. We will be planning another Fire Ceremony and Sweatlodge for early December.

I have been travelling in Texas since this Sunday Nov 13

My work in Texas has allowed me to connect with my Mexica brothers and sisters who live in this region of Aztlan and who see this area as part of the ancestral homeland from where the ancient Aztecs migrated south into the Valley of Mexico many years ago.

I am working with the sacred Maya Calendar Cholk'ij days chanelling healing energy in behalf of a number of individuals here including a family of K'iche Mayas who live in this area. I am also using my Taino traditional practices to cleanse and purify work areas and home environment that need to be rid of negative energy.

My work with the energies of Aztec and Maya culture here in Houston brought me in contact with the sacred tradition of one of the most imortant manifestations of the ancient Mother Spirit of the Aztecs, an entity who is their counterpart of our own Taino mother spirit called Ata bey. The name of the Aztec mother Spirit is Tonanzin. Mother Tonanzin has come to be associated with the post-conquest Mexican manifestation of the virgin Mary called "Our Lady of Guadalupe" and the present shrine to this Catholic icon is actualy situated on the hill of Tepeyac, the same exact site where the ancient Tonanzin temple used to stand.

As part of my work in Houston I had the opportunity to make a brief visit at the local shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe near the Downtown area. There I asked the spirit of the ancient mother Tonanzin to help me with the work that I was carrying out in behalf of a Mexican-American family there.

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Our Fire Ceremony and Sweatlodge covered by local media

Greetings my friends
My traditional Fire Ceremony and the Taino Sweatlodge ceremony that resembles the temazcal or "tuj" of my people which Miguel and I celebrated at his home was covered by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper this past Sunday Nov 7 2010

Fire Ceremoies in the Buffalo, New York Area

Greetings
This is Antonio's associate Miguel Sague with a message:
On the weekend of October 2 2010 Antonio and I travelled to northwestern New York State and I helped him conduct three separate instances of the sacred MAYA FIRE CEREMONY of his people. The attendees reported a powerful sense of peace and serenity as they participated in the ancient rite. We also introduced them to other important elements of Maya tradition including a Sunday morning and early afternoon-long session of the sacred seed readings via which many individuals were given the opportunity to experience the oracular magic of his people. I feel that this was a wonderful series of events in which the folks from this area near Buffalo, New York were given a valuable and unforgettable insight into hidden realms of Indigenous wisdom.

My Fire Ceremony at the Pittsburgh Indian Center Pow Wow

My Friends

I was assisted in my traditional Maya Fire Blessing Ceremony by my Taino brother Miguel Sague this past weekend at the Council Of Three Rivers American Indian Center Pow Wow in the Pittsburgh area. My ceremony took place on Saturday Sept 26 on the fire site overlooking the main dance area of the Pow Wow grounds at the end of the festivities. We were joined by a group of participants who gathered around us after having enjoyed the celebrations under a beautiful late September afternoon sky.

Our American sister Carolyn took this video of the event.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1049268900#!/video/video.php?v=1416812579936&ref=mf

New Message From Teacher Antonio August 2010

My friends

This is Maya teacher Antonio Aj Ik speaking to you through the translating assistance of my spirit brother Miguel of the Taino people.

It has come to my attention that the public declarations of impending Doom continue unabated in spite of the messages that we the teachers, elders and wise men and women of my people have shared with the world. Recently my spirit brother showed me the commercials for a television program that was being announced on the North American network the History Channel called "Nostradamus 2012". My only commentary on this is; SHAME ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL.The programming excecutives and high-ranking personnel of this network are knowledgable enough to know that they are feeding useless mindless dissinformation to the public concerning the subject of our sacred calendar.

We the legitimate guardians of this ancient Maya tradition have already established over and over again that all of these associations that have been created by commercial interests such as the History Channel between the prophetic message of the Mayan Calendar and all of the fake non-Indigenous elements of the curent 2012 craze are totally false! These fake non-Indigenous non-Maya elements include all mention of Nostradamus, Atlantis, Mu, Extra-terrestials, Planet X, December 21 Raptures, Biblical Apocalypse and all the rest.

We the legitimate guardians of the ancient Maya tradition strongly encourage the people of the 21st century to stop listening to the loud jammering and noise and start paying attention to the quiet humble voice of simple Indigenous corn-farmers like myself. The elder Don Alejandro who is from my own K'iche people and speaks my language has been here in this country of the United States and even visited in the city where I now make my residence, Pittsburgh. He has stated the same thing that I am saying. There will be no Doom and Gloom but instead a sacred transition. We the inhabitants of this earth must make ready for that transition. He says the same things that I say. It is up to us as residents of this planet to go back to the old simple truths, the old simple example of the ancients, a respect for the Earth Mother and for each other.

I have met with one of the representatives of the world's Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers Council several months ago right here in Pittsburgh. Her name is Grandmother FlorDeMayo. She received my gift of a sacred codex chronicling the current 360-day tun that begins with the holy day FOUR IMOX ("4 Imix" in Yucatec Maya Language) and ends with the holy day TWELVE JUNAJPU ("12 Ahau" in Yucatec Maya Laguage). She gifted me a power necklace bearing a miniature skull that mirrors the energy of the crystal skulls that she works with. Grandmother FlorDeMayo is also a Maya teacher like mayself and like Don Alejandro. She is a respected elder and she shares our message of possibilities, opportunities and geat hope. What purpose would this powerful woman have in travelling all over the world taking the hopeful message of terrestial redemption to people of all races and nationalities if she were expecting some sort of inevitable global catastrophe.

As the History Channel prepares to air another round of insistent missinformation, I, with the assistance of my spirit brother Miguel am prearing another round of workshops and ceremonies aimed at countering the negativity raised by these false prophets of the media.

We look forward to seeing those of you who are interested in the truth. We are also interested in responding to the requests for advise, counsel and teachings which we are happy to receive.

COUNCIL OF THREE RIVERS AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER 2010 POW WOW

Maya teacher Antonio Aj Ik and Taino elder Miguel Sague will lead a sacred fire ceremony and temazcal/kansi sweatlodge purification rite at the end of the first day of the COUNCIL OF THREE RIVERS AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER POW WOW on Saturday September 25 after 5:00 PM

Join us at the Pow Wow during the afternoon and then stay afterward for this meaningful ceremonial event

COUNCIL OF THREE RIVERS AMERICAN INDIAN CENTER 2010 POW WOW

Maya Calendar Prophetic Message at Metaphysical Festival

Miguel Sobaoko Koromo Sague, the Taino Indigenous associate of K'iche Maya Calendar teacher Antonio Aj Ik of Guatemala participated in two major East-Coast U.S. metaphysical festivals in the month of July of 2010, providing workshops and conducting both traditional Taino and Maya ceremony in behalf of the Maya-Taino Prophecy Initiative and the Maya Tradition Circle.

The first of the functions was the thirtieth anniversary of the well-known STARWOOD FESTIVAL which was celebrated at the Wisteria Campground near Athens, Ohio this year.

The second festival was SUMMERFEST at the Brushwood Campground in Northwestern New York . At both of these events Miguel offered workshops, musical presentations and private readings, sharing the positive and optimistic message of the 2012 Prophecy from the perspective of his own Taino ancestral tradition and that of his Maya teacher, Don Antonio Aj Ik.

This effort allowed Miguel to reach an audience which had not yet heard the truth about the Mayan Calendar prophecy as it is being shared by the authentic Maya and Taino faith-keepers.

The presentations were well-received and opened up the possibility for future workshops at other metaphysical events around the United States.

The Maya Tradition Circle and the Maya-Taino Prohecy Initiative welcome invitations to events such as this one in which we can offer a glimpse at the genuine message of the Maya Calendar and related Indigenous shamanic culture which holds out a vital element of hope to a world in transition. We look forward to greater interaction between ourselves as Indigenous people and human beings in the world who seek this powerful wisdom that our ancestors bequeathed to the Earth.

Debate on Taino-Maya contacts heats up in 1999

As early as the year 1999 after much work at the Buchillones Taino archeological site in Cuba the Canadian archeologist David Pendergast publicly speculated that a curious object being held at the Royal Ontario Museum as part of a collection of items found by him years earlier in the Altun Ha Maya archeological site of Belize was in fact a Taino manatee-bone vomic spatula of the kind that ancient Taino shamans and chiefs used to induce vomiting in their purification rituals.

His comment sparked debate on the subject and doubts were raised by experts such as University of Manitoba archeologist Louis Adair, who objected that the Classic Era Maya period represented by the Altun Ha archeological site came and went before the rise of the Classic Taino period in Cuba and elsewhere several centuries later which is characterized by the use of vomic spatulas. Dr. Bill Keegan, curator of Caribbean archeology at Florida Museum of natural History tends to agree with Adair but cautions that pre-classic Taino ancestors in the Caribbean may already have been using primitive less sophisticated versions of the vomic spatulas earlier in their history before the full-classic Taino culture had developed. These early spatulas may then have found their way to a classic-era Maya site through cultural interaction.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y99/ago99/16e12.htm

Now there is even more evidence arising which supports early contact between the Caribbean Tainos and the Mayas of the Ycatan peninsula.

Posted by Antonio Aj Ik's associate, Miguel Sague

Rick Santorum still affecting us all

Re: Rick Santorum touches us Tainos where we live

Taakji My Relatives
This is the first time that I am going to post a message concerning the disaster
that has been unleashed this Spring and early Summer on the waters of our
homeland by the world's MABOIA agents of greed.

In 2006 we here in Pennsylvania were busy attempting to vote out the state
representative Rick Santorum, a man who had used his considerable power in
Congress to further the interests of the kinds of beasts responsible for this
year's Gulf Environmental catastrophe. back then I attempted to bring into focus
the threat posed to our ancestral homeland waters via the off-shore drilling
policies espoused by legislators such as Santorum, and supported by the Bush
administration then in power. The two posts to which I have alluded here in this
response message are the ones I first posted back then in 2006. They were sent
out to our subscribers under the title "Rick Santorum touches us Tainos where we
live".

My information and documentation was based on facts provided to the Caney Circle
by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, an organization based out of Washington DC
which dedicates itself to monitoring the activities of legislators who are a
threat to the environment and wildlife.

The fact is that we here in Pennsylvania did vote Santorum and many of his ilk
out of office that year but in a way we were already too late to avoid this
year's disaster. Their nefarious work had already been accomplished, and they
had laid the groundwork of lax oversight policies and generous freedom of action
which the big oil companies needed to run roughshod over the ecology of our
sacred waters.

I was a bit disappointed at the lack of response that I received back in 2006
from my fellow Tainos, especially those living in Pennsylvania to my posted
messages concerning the threat posed to our homeland waters by the actions of
legislators such as Santorum.

Later on I was even more disappointed at the resistance from some quarters in
the Taino community to our support of presidential candidate Barak Obama who I
feel represented our best hope at a realistic response to the ecological threats
which Big Oil poses to the Gulf and the Caribbean. This is an interesting topic
to approach because there are some now who seem intent on laying the present
Gulf ecological fiasco at the doorstep of the present sitting president.

I was just as dismayed as anyone else when I heard Mr. Obama's pronouncements
late in his campaign in which he suddenly supported some limited offshore
drilling in the gulf off the cost of Florida after having opposed it
persistently for a long time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr9o1sTuhg8. I was
even more disappointed later on after he was elected president and lifted the
ban on expanding off-shore drilling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA7RAfHN-wo
It is true that this kind of flip-flopping is unacceptable and he must be held
accountable for it. And it is also true that the sitting president should take
responsibility for an environmental disaster such as the one that is unfolding
in the Gulf right now simply because the "buck" needs to stop someplace. However
in judging his connection or the connection of his administration to this
calamitous event of April 26 it must be admitted that he is ultimately one of
those who has for a very long time advocated for the very restrictions and
regulations which could have reined in the Big Oil greed-mongers that the
Republicans and conservatives love so much, and was long the target of
right-wing and Republican attacks for his environmental stance. It is simply NOT
FAIR to now say that Obama is at fault for the BP fiasco in the Gulf.

My relatives, whether you are Tano or not, this is a crucial issue in all of our
lives and it is important to approach it with our eyes wide open and not clouded
by a lot of conspiracy theory nonsense. We must recognize who are the real good
guys and who are the real bad guys in this issue. As Indigenous people or people
who support Indigenous issues, we must all become fully educated on the facts
surrounding this disaster, especially the tangled web of regulation-avoidance
tactics which BP used and which was supported by the conservative minions who
think like former senator Rick Santorum.

The Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle officially supports all efforts by
environmental groups to force the Obama administration to take appropriate steps
not only to force BP and its partners to assume full responsibility for the
efforts to correct the damage done to the Gulf but also to realistically
approach the important issue of free-wheeling energy companies that feel they
can do whatever they want to our Earth Mother. These companies have enjoyed too
many freedoms for too long under previous administration and this present one is
by all reasonable interpretation the one that provides us the best chance at
righting those past wrongs.

Taino Ti
Miguel Sobaoko Koromo Sague

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted in 2006
--- In sobaokokoromo2@yahoogroups.com, sobaokokoromo1@... wrote:
>
> Tau again my relatives
> It is important for us who are concerned with the welfare of the
Caribbean homeland to be aware that this Pennsylvania Republican representative
voted against the interest of the Caribbean environment this past June. Rick
Santorum took part in a vote of the Senate that was considering an ammendment
for the inventorying of offshore oil reserves on the Florida coast. The
ammendment was introduced by Republican Florida senator Mel Martinez among
others. This ammendment would have protected this infinitely fragile and already
endangered tropical ecosystem from harmful exploratory seismic oil and gas
surveys. Santorum's vote against the ammendment helped defeat it and as a result
of that years of former legislation in favor of protecting this region was
seriously erroded.
> Please review the graphic that I have attached here outlining the Senate
vote.
> Taino Ti
> Sobaoko Koromo
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miguel A Sague Jr
> To: sobaokokoromo2@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 14:16:32 -0600 (CST)
> Subject: [sobaokokoromo2] Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is an enemy of
Ata Bey
>
>
> Tau my relatives
> As part of the environmental concern to which I referred in my last post I
wish to ask you (especially those of you who are Pennsylvania residents) to
become acquainted with the dismal environmental record of Pennsylvania's most
FAR-RIGHT congressional representative, Rick Santorum. If you are a Pennsylvania
resident I urge you to click the link in this letter that allows you to send
your comment to Mr. Santorum.
> Taino Ti
> Sobaoko Koromo

------------------------------------------------------------
Correspondence frm DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE ACTION FUND
> Dear Wildlife Supporter,
> Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) is an Enemy of Wildlife
> Find out how poorly Sen. Santorum voted on key conservation issues. Then,
tell him that you're disappointed in his voting record on the conservation
issues we all care about.
>
> Forward this message to your family, friends, and neighbors...
> U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) earned one of the lowest possible scores in
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund?s 2005 Conservation Report Card for not
casting a single vote to protect wildlife or wild lands.
> Send a message to Sen. Santorum now and let him know you are very disappointed
in his dismal conservation voting record. He needs to know that his constituents
care deeply about wildlife issues and will be watching how he votes in the
future.
> Sen. Santorum?s zero-percent score is simply unacceptable for Pennsylvania's
conservation-conscious voters. His anti-wildlife votes are reversing decades of
progress, shortchanging future generations and ruining Pennsylvania's rich
natural heritage.
> This past year, Sen. Santorum voted to allow oil and gas drilling in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, place oil refineries in wildlife refuges, and
cut conservation programs. These votes represent industry lobbyists, not with
the wildlife-loving citizens of Pennsylvania.
> To see how Sen. Santorum and other members of Congress voted, check out
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund's Conservation Report Card.
> Thanks again for all you do to help protect our precious wildlife and the
natural heritage that we'll pass on to our children and grandchildren. We're
working to give wildlife a voice in Washington, but we couldn't do it without
you.
> Sincerely,
> Rodger Schlickeisen, President
> Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund
>
> P.S. To learn more about the Action Fund, visit our website. The Defenders
Action Fund depends on the generosity of wildlife supporters like you, so please
consider making a donation.
>
>
> Paid for by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund at
http://www.defendersactionfund.org/
and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
>
>
>
> Privacy Policy Contact Us Donate Defenders Action Fund Home
>
> Copyright 2006 Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund
>.
> The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund can be contacted at:
> 1130 Seventeenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036
>

Guatemalan army's war against the Mayas exposed

Guatemala hands over key file in army genocide case

Sarah Grainger

GUATEMALA CITY

Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:26pm EDT

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's government handed over a military document on Thursday containing evidence soldiers massacred villagers during the country's civil war which could help prosecute top officials for genocide.

A copy of a military file dating from the 1980s, complete with maps, telegrams and hand-written patrol reports about an operation known as "Plan Sofia," was mailed anonymously to President Alvaro Colom last year.

Colom's government verified its authenticity and passed it to the attorney general's office, which has a long-running case against the Central American country's former dictator, Efrain Rios Montt, accusing him of ordering the murder of thousands of civilians.

The document was also turned over for use in a parallel case in Spain, brought by Mayan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchu, which accuses Rios Montt of carrying out genocide during his 1982-83 rule.

Nearly a quarter of a million people, mostly native Mayans, died during the 36-year-long civil war pitting leftist guerrillas against security forces.

Rios Montt, now 83, still serves in Guatemala's Congress.

A U.N.-backed Truth Commission report found the army committed 85 percent of the killings, but this is the first time a military document might be able to link the highest chain of command to human rights violations in a court of law.

"These documents paint a picture of command responsibility," said Andrew Hudson of the Washington-based group Human Rights First. "When put together they show Rios Montt and the top commanders were aware of and were directing a policy which the United Nations says constituted genocide," he told Reuters.

Colom pledged to address war-time abuses after taking office in 2008. His uncle, Manuel Colom Argueta, was a prominent leftist politician killed by a military ambush in 1979 at the height of Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war.

He promised to open sealed military archives that date back to 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup toppled Guatemala's democratically elected president, despite the army's claims that opening the files would threaten national security.

The document reveals details about the military's scorched earth campaign aimed at wiping out guerrilla sympathizers.

"Plan Sofia" was based on a counter-insurgency strategy to attack towns providing food and shelter to guerrilla fighters as a way to "drain the water from the fish," Colom's government said in a statement after making the document public.

Women, children and old people were routinely beaten, raped, tortured and killed by soldiers during these raids, according the country's truth commission.

A Taino in the land of the Anasazi

Takaji My Relatives

On Tuesday April 27 I was flown by the production staff of a new paranormal investigation TV show, along with a number of paranormal investigators, and other experts, to the St James hotel in the north eastern New Mexico village of Cimarron to explore the possbilities of otherwordly activity in the hotel itself and in a near-by mesa called Urraca, both of which have a reputation of beng haunted.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-stjameshotel.html

Information on the hotel and its reputation can be found by clicking the link above, but the main reason I was there was to give my opinion on the local legends that mentioned Native Indigenous influence on the paranormal activities at the neighboring mesa which happens to be located inside an enormous boyscout ranch.. Some of this reputation is pretty outlandish as attested by the following narration posted on a discusion site by a former boyscout.

"No, but freaky unexplainable sh*t happens all the time and the stories/videos freak me out.

I used to be a boy scout and heard some pretty scary stories about Urraca Mesa (at a huge scout ranch/camp), in New Mexico.

Apparently it has the highest incidence of lightning in the state. There's tons of iron in the bedrock below, so your compasses go haywire atop the mesa.

Native american legend says that the mesa is the gateway to the 5th dimension; between the real and the underworld. Often times there are mysterious blue lights seen from afar, when it is known that there are no scouts/employees anywhere near the mesa (all trails are very well monitored). Freaky shit. But the best of all: it is shaped like a skull (upper left of pic). Apparently an old camp director went up there at night many years ago; his jeep broke down, and he got lost. When they found him the next day he was stumbling around blind and all his hair had turned from black to full grey."

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2089/urracawf5.jpg

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/archive/t-504851-p-4.html

I shared the results of my personal research and my previous conversations with both local Indigenous people, and with people whose roots are in the Indigenous culture of the area during my on-camera interview. I also was interviewed concerning the relationship between the ancient Indigenous inhabitants of the Southwest, the Anasazi, and the Mesoamerican classic-era Maya, including the concept of the 2012 prophecy. The quote below from the online site http://www.thefurtrapper.com/anasazi.htm sums up some important facts about the trade-links between the Indigenous cultures of what is now the Southwest U.S. and the high civilizations of Mexico and Central America.

Around 750 A.D., an elite group of "Ancestral Puebloans" started to build in Chaco Canyon. This elite group was either from Mesoamerica or strongly influenced by the Toltec Culture. As evidenced by an extensive trade in turquoise, pipestone, shells, carved flutes, mosaic baskets, and fine pottery, as well as, copper bells and macaw feathers from Meso-America...five great Indian cultures thrived in the western hemisphere for centuries: the Incas of South America, and four from central and southern Mexico, Mayan, Olmec, Zapotec, and Teotihuacan. Indians from these Meso-American (Mexico City to Honduras) cultures moved into the southwestern United States. They brought with them their knowledge and technological advancements (Southwest Indian Council). Many archeologists agree on a wide trade network between the Southwest Indians and Mexico, especially with the Toltec, but discount the migration from Mexico. These archeologists believe the Southwest Indians emerged from the archaic period (Stone).

Over the next two centuries (800-1000 A.D.), the Ancestral Puebloans spread across every arable acre of the San Juan Basin. More than ten thousand separate sites have been identified. Archaeologists have discovered at least one hundred and fifty great house style structures outside of Chaco Canyon. These Pueblos are referred to as Outliers. An elaborate road and trail system connected the outlying villages with Chaco Canyon. Despite having over four hundred miles of a mapped out road system, there is no evidence that Chaco Indian used the wheel.

Here are some images of the TV production team;

Ryan

Justin

Chad speaking with parapsychologist Loyd

Dave, the new administrator of the hotel
My stay at the St James Hotel can only be classified as "picturesque". The building has been recently fully refurbished by its new owners to
re-capture the original wild-west feel of the old structure. It was
reputed to be the stopping point for a large number of important
characters associated with the famous Santa Fe Trail.

The room where I was lodged was furnished with 19th century furnishings.

The day after my on-camera interview I and wto others who had been intervewed for the TV show were driven to Santa Fe. A couple of us pitched in and rented a car there. We drove to historic Las Vegas, New Mexico, one of the first towns visited in August 1846 by U.S. army brigadier general Stephen W. Kearny on his invasion expedition into what was at that time internationally recognized Mexican territory.

I was fascinated by Kearny's words as he proclaimed his current mission to the citizens of the Mexican village on that August day: "I have come amongst you by the orders of my government to take possession of your country..." I guess he wasn't leaving anything unclear about whose country it originally was and what the intention of his nation was for it.

The full text of Kearny's speech which he delivered to the people of las Vegas from atop one of the adobe buildings in the town plaza is now recorded on a metal plate attached to the trunk of an ancient tree still there at the twon plaza.

One gets a sense reading this text that notwithstanding all of the sincere-sounding promises of enduring respect for the culture, Spanaish language, and religion of the local inhabitants and the line "We come amongst you as friends not as enemies, protectors not as conquerors..." that a huge historical land-grab was actually taking place.

After all, now the descendants of those very local inhabitants are looked on suspiciously as possible illegal aliens.

My stay in Las Vegas, New Mexico was brief but colorful and I was able to appreciate the enormous contribution of the Indigenous people to the local art and culture.

I stayed overnight in Las Vegas, New Mexico and on the following afternoon started off for the Pueblo Indian reservations of the Rio Grande river north of Santa Fe. On the way there on route 285 not far from the Nambe Pueblo Reservation had the opportunity to stop at a roadside stand stocked with great local foods, ground blue corn and traditional herbs. I bought a pack of ground hot red pepper for my son Cha.

I was fortunate to arrive at the Santa Clara reservation just in time for the last tour into the nearby Puye cliff-dwelling ruins right above the Pueblo. The guide was an intelligent and articulate Santa Clara Pueblo resident. a young man with a penchant for baseball called A. J. I was surprised to hear from A.J. that he had actually been to Pittsburgh way back in the 1990's and had been at our old Three Rivers Stadium before it was demolished to make way for the two new stadiums
now standing in the North Side. A.J. had come to Pittsburgh back then
as part of a Native American contingent who participated in an event at
an arts and crafts store in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill called
"Four Winds Gallery".I immediatelly felt a strong bond with the young man and requested his Facebook ID.

From A.J. I learned a lot about the history of the Tewa Indigenous people of Santa Clara Pueblo and their ancient ancestors who lived in the cliffs above the present-day village.

A. J. led me over a narrow trail up into the cliff where his ancestors had established a community that boasted storage areas which were skillfully dug right into the tuffa stone side of the cliff.

A.J.'s ancient ancestors who built the structures up in the Puye cliffs are direct descendants of the Anasazi people who built the impressive buildings in the floor of Chaco Canyon around the year 800 A.D.. I was determined to visit that place next.

On the way to Chaco Canyonon Routes 84 and 96 I travelled through the Chama River country, near the town of Abiquiu, New Mexico. The view of the river from the heights is spectacular in that area.

I arrived in a town at the foot of the San Pedro Mountains ironically named "Cuba", New Mexico on Thursday night and spent the night there after an hour admiring the extraordinary spectacle of the South Western night sky with its thousands of stars, a sight that I had not seen since my childhood in my own birth-place of Cuba.

In the morning I set out on Route 40 through the Jicarilla Apache Reservation where I had an opportunity to speak with members of the Inde Nation (Apache). They run a small casino right on Route 40 not far from the reservation border called "Apache Nugget".

Not long after my visit in Jicarilla Apache country I finally found myself in a place I have wanted to visit for almost thirty years. In a way this was a kind of pilgrimage and I treated it as such. I arrived in the famous Chaco Canyon region.

After passing a few local settlements, some of which contained actual contemporary hogans which are traditionally shaped round buildings based on the ancient dwellings of the Dine (Navajo) people, we finally reached the area where the ancient Anasazi built their towns.

Along the way I stopped at a breath-takingly beautiful place and climbed on a huge boulder. On top of the boulder I offered ceremony to the spirits of the place with tobacco and corn meal and a song from my Taino quena flute.

After my ceremony on the boulder I continued on to the area of the ruins. I was not disappointed. It turned into one of the most sacred moments of my life. I was given the opportunity to explore the ancient remains of one ancient settlement called Hungo Pavi where I again performed ceremony and offered tobacco, corn and flute song.

After Hungo Pavi I moved on to the most impressive Anasazi site in all of the South West United States, a place called PUEBLO BONITO. I spent over an hour exploring the many rooms, and kivas (round ceremonial underground structures) of the huge setlement.

This incredibly complex community supported hundreds of people over a thousand years ago and maintained close overland trading partnerships with the ancient Mayas of Central America at the same time that my own Taino ancestors maintained cross-gulf contacts with the same Maya culture.

I thank the sacred powers of the Cosmos Ata Bey my universal Mother, Yoka Hu, the Sky Lord of Life, the spirits of the four sacred directions, Achiano, Koromo, Rakuno and Sobaiko my guardian totems and my friends associated with the production of the Urraca Mesa episode of AMERICAN GHOST HUNTERS who helped me realize this pilgrimage.

Taino Ti

Miguel

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