Our faces and our hearts: two perspectives of the understanding of the human and community

Abstract

In this text will reflect about the human formation was carried out in the period before de discovery and conquest of the American continent, in two cultures: Tojolabal and Aztec. For the Mayan Tojolabal culture, there is no principle of individuation or “I” but of the “We”, that is, the sense of community in which the human being receives his human formation. In contrast, for the Mexicas or Aztecs, education was carried out from molding and building what we would now call “character and personality” of the “face and heart” of the human being, that is through poetry called “flower and song”. In this sense, poetry and oral tradition will be analyzed as one of the ideal means of transmit values, customs and traditions, as well as to acquire knowledge in human faces-hearts and within the community.