Youth and technology united to preserve our cultural heritage

Mr. Felipe Paredes Sulub, 90 years old, with José Armando Figueroa Novelo during the interview.  The interviewee remembers, among other things, a curious fact about the Aluxes (goblins or spirits).  When someone in the community had measles, atole (a hot maize drink) was put in gourds on the windowsill for the Aluxes to bless, and then was later given to the sick person to drink.

The boys and girls, guided by the program’s advisors, interview the town’s elders.  Using a tape recorder and a digital camera during the interview, the interviewer asks a series of basic questions of each interviewee, recording information about the town’s traditions, customs, myths and legends.  The children have also started a program designed to preserve townspeople’s old photographs by scanning them into the computers and saving the images to compact discs.

Once the children have finished with the interviews, they transcribe the information, saving the text of the interviews to word processing programs, and using Adobe Photoshop to edit and save the photos they have taken.  Later, both the text and photo files are saved to compact discs.

This program of cultural preservation allows the children to discover an amazing and new world in their own town.

The elderly enjoy the visits from the young people, and while they are happy to be able to share some of their knowledge of the town’s history, they are especially gratified to see the town’s young people taking an interest in their own cultural background.

Don Tranquilino Chan Pech, 76 years old, related to Sugeidy Fuentes Rosado stories of how fishing activities differed in his day, and how the whole family worked together to clean, cook and sell the day’s catch, fruit of many hours’ work in the gulf.