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peasant communities.

Very few have access to the Toltequity knowledge, of those few only some can scrupulously follow the disciplined practices and of them, only the chosen can come into contact with the power. However, all readers of the teachings of Don Juan, will find a philosophy that is alive in the indigenous cultures from throughout the Americas.

In my experience with indigenous and peasant communities, I have found many parallels between the teachings of Don Juan and community practices. I believe that to survive five hundred years as an indian in a colonized country, it is necessarily required to be a warrior. Indians and peasants of Mexico are the Toltequity cultural practitioners, because only in this way they have been able to survive injustice, exploitation and denial.

The free and democratic society we all want to build for the next millennium will have to end colonialism, there may not be any longer winners and losers, a "profound Mexico" nor an "imaginary Mexico" in permanent struggle, nor indigenous Mexicans and non-indigenous Mexicans. Mexicans will build this country looking for answers in our deep inside, on the basis of our own wisdom and philosophy, will finally stop importing solutions. We are holders of an incomparable cultural heritage and are direct heirs of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The Toltecáyotl is the philosophical thinking of our "old grandparents", in the works of Carlos Castaneda we can find some reference points of this millenary wisdom, because the future of Mexico lies in its past. This might be another way of approaching the work of Carlos Castaneda.

GUILLERMO MARÍN
Oaxaca, Spring 1998