25 Principles of Morality | Alain de Benoist

I do not have much taste for "morality." I know its genealogy too well (which Nietzsche seems to me to have clarified rather well). I have a tendency, moreover, to consider that there are as many "moralities" as there are possible levels of humanity—which makes for quite a number. 

 

Soul over mind, life over reason, image over concept.

 

On the other hand, I believe strongly in principles, which can also be rules of life. (Every historical becoming goes from myth to principle by way of an idea). On the off chance, here are mine; I hope not to fail them too often.

1

Man is God’s partner, His associate for better or for worse. Both create in common. God is not above, nor outside of us. He is not beyond our sensations either. What matters is not to believe in God. What matters is to act in such a way that He can believe in us. To find and identify Him in us, to reveal ourselves as Him. Body and soul are one and the same thing. To reduce one to the other, to oppose these notions to each other: this stems from the same sickness of the spirit. A God who does not behave as one has the right to expect of Him deserves to be repudiated—provided that he who repudiates Him has given the best of himself.

2

It is not enough to be born, one must still be "created." Creation is posterior to birth; one can only be "created" by oneself. This is how one gives oneself a soul. Meister Eckhart speaks of "self-creation" (Selbstschöpfung): "I was the cause of myself, there where I willed myself, and I was nothing else. I was what I willed, and what I willed was me." In the Edda (Hávamál), there is the image of Odin sacrificed by himself to himself. A people founds a culture when it becomes cause of itself—when it finds in itself alone (in its tradition) the source of perpetual novelty. The same for man: to find in oneself the causes of self and the means of self-transcendence. (A decadent head of state is he who derives his authority from an other-than-self, from something other than the transcendence of his own principle).

3

Virtue is not a means relating to some ultimate end. It is its own end—its own reward. The interior reconquest or reconquest of self: the starting point of every quest as of every conquest. And first the mutual recognition and rediscovery of animus and anima. To establish over oneself a sovereign empire. To be to oneself one’s own object. To obey the Master who is in us, at the very instant we command the Slave who is in us. Search for the just mean.

4

To be oneself is not a sufficient watchword. One must still become what one can be—one must build oneself according to the idea one has of oneself. One must never be satisfied with oneself. One must want to change oneself before wanting to change the world. To accept the world as it is rather than accept ourselves as we are. To develop in ourselves those among our potentialities that make us specifically human; and among these, those that make us specifically ourselves. A strong will allows one to be what one wants—no matter what one was. Will takes precedence over all determinisms, even that of birth, provided that one can will. First cultivate interior energy, that energy of which "the ant can give proof as much as the elephant" (Stendhal), and which allows one to be in winter that through which spring returns.

5

Fix one’s own norm—and stick to it. Take the law in oneself, with the condition that it is not to be changed. (Which does not forbid giving new dimensions to the chosen perspective). Do not yield. Do not bend. Continue without reasons to continue. Be faithful to betrayed causes, be faithful for those who have not been. Be faithful also to those who are no longer. Defend against all and against oneself the idea one has of things and that one would like to be able to have of oneself.

6

Take "possession" of others only when one has taken "possession" of oneself: constraint upon oneself is the first condition of the right to constrain others. Likewise, tolerate one’s contemporaries after having tolerated oneself. The man of quality has demands first toward himself, the common man has them only toward others (Confucius). Power must be founded on superiority, not superiority on power. Those who direct have the right to possess, but those who possess do not necessarily have the right to direct. The man of quality is beyond despotisms: he dominates the dominators by ways that are his own. "A new nobility is necessarily opposed to everything that is rabble and despot" (Nietzsche).

The higher one climbs, the more one walks alone: the more one must count on oneself. Those who are above are responsible for those who are below: they must respond to their expectation; they have "privileges" only insofar as one can really unload onto them—otherwise, all revolts are just. Freely follow those who are superior to us: have pride in having found a Master (Stefan George). The counterpart of submission is not domination, but protection. One has the right to obey and the duty to command (oneself)—not the inverse. Proclaim the duty to have rights, and the fine right to have duties.

7

The world is immeasurable tragedy. All existence is tragic, all affirmation is tragic. The world is chaos—but one can give it form. What we do has no other meaning than that which we give it. Counterpart: everything resonates on everything. Our most minute gestures have a consequence in the most remote parts of the universe. Evil has no positive existence. It is only a simple limitation of what becomes—a limitation of the form that beings give to the world. A pure, eternal negation.

8

We deserve everything that happens to us—individually and collectively. Past a certain threshold, there is neither luck nor chance: our adversaries, in the final analysis, are never strong except through our own weaknesses. Consequently, do not merely accept, but will what happens. Will what happens once we have not been able to prevent it from occurring. No resignation, but the maintenance of our own freedom. Amor fati: the only means of acting when one can no longer act. Stoicism: the only possible conduct when others are no longer. Make it so that what we can do nothing about can also do nothing to us (Evola).

9

In the beginning was action. Great and strong things have no raison d’être; that is why they must be done. (But everything that is unmotivated is not necessarily great and strong). Action is the most important thing, not he who undertakes it; the mission, not he who fulfills it. Against individualism— for an active impersonality. What one must do cannot be explained in terms of motives. Nobility keeps silent.

10

Honor: never fail the norms one has set for oneself. The image one has of oneself becomes true—this is evident—from the instant one conforms to it. From then on, whether it be an "image" or a "reality" matters little; the two terms are merged. The idea becomes flesh: this is the true incarnation of the Logos. Every promise commits, no circumstance releases. To be able to be proud of oneself is the best means of not having to be ashamed of others.

11

Style is the man. Liturgy counts more than dogma. The beautiful is never wrong. It is better to do mediocre things well than to do excellent things badly. The way one does things is worth more than the things themselves. The way one lives one’s ideas is worth more than these ideas. The way one lives is worth more than what one lives—and sometimes more than life. More simplicity than manners, one is a boor; more manners than simplicity, one is a pedant; as much manners as simplicity, such is the man of quality (Confucius).

12

Nietzsche: "What is noble? To seek situations where one needs attitudes. To abandon happiness to the great number, that happiness which is peace of soul, virtue, comfort, Anglo-Saxon commercialism. To instinctively seek heavy responsibilities. To know how to make enemies everywhere, at worst to make one of oneself."

13

Put one’s duty before one’s passions, and one’s passions before one’s interests. To accomplish "good actions" to earn one’s salvation, go to paradise, etc., is still to serve one’s interests. Do what one must, not what one loves. But this requires apprenticeship: man needs rules to build himself, because he is infinitely malleable. Work as service, duty as destiny.

14

Realize and ceaselessly remake the lived harmony of contingencies and principles. Make it so that acts conform to words. The man whose words exceed his acts is no more master of himself than the man whose acts exceed his words. To be sincere is not to tell the truth. It is to adhere entirely, without second thoughts, to everything one undertakes.

15

Do not repent, but draw lessons. Put everything into action. Not to do harm, but if one has done so, do not seek to justify oneself. The justifications one gives oneself are so many flights from oneself. Repentance does not aim to erase the fault, but to give oneself good conscience. Render good for good, justice for evil. (If one rendered good for evil, what would one render for good—and what value would it have?)

16

Never forgive; forget much. Never hate; despise often. Plebeian sentiments: hatred, rancor, susceptibility, vanity, avarice. Hatred, which is the contrary of contempt; rancor, which is the contrary of forgetting; susceptibility and vanity, which are the contrary of pride; avarice, which is the contrary of wealth. Of all these sentiments, ressentiment is the most despicable. Nietzsche: "Near is the time of the most despicable of men, he who is no longer even capable of despising himself."

17

Against utilitarianism. As with men, as with armies. Troops that need to know why they are fighting in order to fight well are already mediocre troops. There is lower: troops that need to be convinced that their cause is the good one. And lower still: those that only fight when they have chances of prevailing. When one must undertake something, concern oneself only secondarily with knowing whether the enterprise can or cannot be crowned with success. The maxim of the Silent One remains the key to Dürer’s engraving, Knight, Death and the Devil. But it is not enough to undertake without being assured of victory, for one must still undertake even when one is sure to fail—because one is sure to fail: because remaining faithful to the norms one has given oneself is then the only honorable way to get through it. Think of the "soldier of Pompeii" (Spengler). And also of the example of Regulus. To want to do like the adversary under the pretext that it succeeded for him, is to become that adversary—not to be different from him. There is baseness as soon as one asks (oneself) "what is it for," "what does it bring," "what obliges us to do it." To try to preserve at all costs a life that we will lose anyway—an apologue of living dogs and dead lions—there’s a fine absurdity.

18

Virtue, like vice, can only be the prerogative of an elite. They require the same capacity for self-mastery; they pertain less to "morality" than to pure will. The freedom to do something always goes hand in hand with a freedom with respect to that something. In other words, one must will only the things to which one also feels capable of renouncing. Julius Evola: "You are permitted to do something only insofar as you are also capable of abstaining from doing it. You are permitted to want something—and to obtain it—only insofar as you are also capable of abstaining from wanting it and giving it up."

19

Do not seek to convince, seek rather to awaken. Life finds meaning in what is more than life—but not beyond life. What is more than life is not expressed in (and by) words, but is sometimes felt. Give precedence to soul over mind, to life over reason, to image over concept.

20

Lyricism can serve as a "moral" rule, provided that one has posited as the essential relation of existence not the relation of man to man, but that of man to the universe. (The only way there is to adhere to the world above is to build oneself by analogy with it). Great heads of state are those thanks to whom peoples can think of themselves lyrically.

21

The present actualizes all pasts, potentializes all futures. To accept the present, through jubilatory assumption of the instant, is to be able to enjoy at the same time all instants. Past, present, and future are the three perspectives, equally actual, given at every moment of historical becoming. Break definitively with the linear conception of history. Everything we do engages what has already come as much as what will (re)come.

22

The goal of life: to put something important between oneself and death. The epoch, like society, can prevent us from doing so. Two ways for society to drive one mad: demand too much, not propose enough. This can be, according to men, exactly the same thing.

23

Solitude. Know how to be of the party of the polar star: the one that stays in place when the others continue to turn. Peace is at the center of movement (Jünger)—in the axis of the wheel. Cultivate in oneself what the man of quality conserves, immutable, in all situations: Confucian jen, purusha of the Aryas, the humanitas of the Romans—the interior core of being.

24

There is no true piety but filial piety, extended to ancestors, to lineage and to people. Jesus affirming that Joseph is not his true father—that he is the son of a single God, the brother of all men—begins the process of disavowal of paternity. Our vanished ancestors are neither spiritually dead nor passed into another world. They are at our sides, in an invisible and rustling crowd. They surround us as long as their memory is perpetuated by their descendants. Thus is justified the cult of ancestors—and the duty to have their name respected.

25

All men of quality are brothers, no matter the race, country, and time.

Alain de Benoist, July 1977.

Originally published as Cahier du Partisan (Partisan Manual), later republished

under title variations such as Manuel du partisan or Mémoire vive.

 

Alain de Benoist (b. 1943)  is the leading thinker of the European "New Right," the metapolitical movement he co-founded in France in 1968 with GRECE. Shaped chiefly by the German Conservative Revolution, he opposes Christianity, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, neoliberalism, representative democracy, egalitarianism, and their chief promoter, the United States. He regards sovereign states outside the Western unipolar order—even non-democratic or anti-secular ones—as checks on globalization and American unilateralism. Preferring "civilizational blocks" to conventional nation-states, he stresses distinct cultural-political zones that interact without Western homogenization. He coined ethnopluralism to advocate preserving and mutually respecting territorially bounded ethno-cultural regions. Key works include View from the Right (1977), How Can One Be a Pagan? (1981), Democracy: The Problem (1985), Europe, Third World, Same Fight (1986), Beyond Human Rights (2004), The Populist Moment (2017) and Against Liberalism (2019). Rejecting the "New Right" label, he stands outside the Left/Right divide. He lives in Paris and continues writing, lecturing and giving interviews.

See also:
Alain de Benoist (2023) - The Time of the Civilisational States.

Three Forms of Violence and Their Responses | Antonino Drago

Johan Galtung gave his definitive formulation of the three forms of violence—direct, structural, and cultural—in 1990 with the publication of his essay "Cultural Violence" in the Journal of Peace Research. Direct violence is what everyone readily understands: a slap, an insult, an act of aggression, a theft, or a physical assault. How can we respond positively? Calmly, with empathy, with a creative response that releases tension, etc. In short, everything taught in nonviolence training.

» Today, we encounter the violence of science. «

 
Structural violence is more difficult to identify: an unemployed person doesn't realize that in Strasbourg, unemployment is deliberately engineered to ensure that manufacturers always have an abundant workforce; someone who deposits money in a bank doesn't realize that their money will fuel a financial system that allows for speculation hundreds, even thousands, of times over the basic material goods of the poorest people in the world.

 

Those who join the army to find employment fail to realize that they become complicit in the panorama of death that surrounds us and which, along with nuclear deterrence, threatens humanity with suicide. We must therefore be careful not to forget what Shantidas always emphasized: structural sin, in the face of which individual sins lose their meaning. The only commandment he mentions is “Thou shalt not kill,” in order to call for conversion in the face of war, understood as the exemplary form of structural violence. Shantidas helped to unmask structural violence when, in the 1950s, he denounced the greatest structural violence of his time: the Two Blocs that dominated the world and were complementary (The Four Plagues, 1959, §§ 1-24). 

 

How can we respond effectively to this? One can try to do so instinctively, but structures are precisely impervious to such reactions. For example, the programmers in Strasbourg have the police at their disposal to suppress protests. One can respond on an emotional level by speaking with the utmost empathy to a person in charge. But at best, the person in charge might change their mind, while the structure would persist.

Ordinary people are incapable of developing a social analysis suited to the situation created by the social structure; indeed, a structure dominates because people generally ignore the complexity of a social structure. It is through this superiority that structures defend themselves. So, to respond effectively to them, it is necessary to establish a clear and precise analysis of the situation. In conclusion, a response is needed that appeals not only to our humanity, but also to the intelligence capable of adapting our energies to the weaknesses of the situation; otherwise, we strike where there is no nail.

 

Finally, there is cultural violence, even more subtle and less perceptible, but no less disastrous than the other two. Here too, Galtung, in my humble opinion, was unclear when he defined it as the support that culture provides to structural violence. Of course, this violence exists: for example, the violence of consumerist propaganda, which supports commercial capitalism; or the scholastic violence that fails to denounce the existing power system. But there is more: autonomous cultural violence that claims to have no alternatives. Consider, for example, the ideological violence of the Church, which declared anyone who read the Gospel in the vernacular a heretic (see the Waldensians), or the violence of money, which assigns a value to everything according to its price. It is this violence that Les Nouvelles de l'Arche highlights when it devotes an issue to racism or patriarchy. This violence is pervasive.

Therefore, to detect it and ultimately avoid it, we must pay particular attention to it. Today, we encounter the violence of science: the idea that science imposes itself upon the mind as humanity's inevitable path. There is also the violence of technology, which invades our human world as an irreversible advance. As early as the 1950s, Lanza del Vasto made a significant contribution to the fight against this type of violence, denouncing it as the greatest violence of our time. In his era, this violence only affected the external world of human beings—radio, television, automobiles, etc.

Today, it has reached its full potential: artificial intelligence is capable of revolutionizing human civilization, to the point of inspiring transhumanism or raising fears of a hierarchy of robots dominating humanity. It will halve the number of available jobs in a short time, revolutionize the education system, create a state secret service a thousand times more powerful than James Bond, and fill all the gaps in the existing arsenal with new weapons. Today, anyone who has grown up with a smartphone has been connected to AI since childhood.

 

According to the text of Revelation 13, the wisdom necessary for escape lies in the ability to name these things—first and foremost, modern science. And Shantidas has given this violence a name: the quest for the infinite, not the infinity of human relationships, but the infinity of the animal world, the infinite number of things to enjoy, the infinite number of social structures in which to participate, and finally, the infinite potential of human (and artificial) intelligence waiting to be discovered. The key to liberation is a "return to the obvious" of human nature in its simplicity and direct human relationships. In conclusion:

 

► the nonviolent response to direct violence is creativity in human relationships;
► the response to structural violence requires understanding the situation;
► the nonviolent response to cultural violence requires being in the world without being of the world—that is, in the incessant and, through artificial intelligence, increasingly penetrating noise of modernity, turning back toward one's own soul and fighting every absolutism and every claim of irreversible progress.

Just as Gandhi and Shantidas did in their respective times.
 

Quoted from:

Antonino Drago (August 15, 2026) - The Three Forms of Violence and Their Responses.

Antonino Drago (b. 1938) is a professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network. An ally of the Ark Community, he teaches at the TRANSCEND Peace University (TPU). He holds a master's degree in physics from the University of Pisa (1961) and is a follower of the Community of the Ark, founded by Gandhi's Italian disciple Lanza del Vasto. A conscientious objector, Drago participated in Italy's campaigns for conscientious objection (1964–1972) and for refusing to pay taxes used to finance military expenditure (1983–2000). Drawing on his extensive experience and writings on these subjects, he taught Nonviolent Popular Defense in the University of Pisa's "Science for Peace" curriculum (2001–2012), as well as Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping (2009–2013), and History and Techniques of Nonviolence in the University of Florence's "Operations of Peace" curriculum (2004–2010). In 2004–2005, Drago served as the first president of the Italian Ministerial Committee for Promoting Unarmed and Nonviolent Civil Defense.

Mexico's Indigenous Peoples Keeping the Country's Profound Soul Alive

With over 130 million inhabitants and a healthy demography, Mexico stands as an extraordinarily vibrant global powerhouse. As the oldest civilization-state in the Western Hemisphere, it has seamlessly married its deep historical roots with hyper-modernity.

 

Greater Mexico City: The Hispanic world's largest metropolis, 

eclipsing Benelux and Scandinavia in population and GDP.

 

The country ranks 12th globally in industrial manufacturing, serves as the world’s 7th largest vehicle producer, and sits as the 4th largest automotive exporter on Earth. Driven by cutting-edge aerospace, electronics, and medical device sectors, media and digital industries, its strategic proximity to the United States and the accelerating nearshoring boom have solidified it as a primary engine of global trade. 

 

The first nation to host the FIFA World Cup for a third time in 2026.

 

Geographically, Mexico links the Americas, the Pacific, the Gulf, and the Caribbean, and spans a immensely diverse territory containing virtually every global climate zone and an exceptional variety of agricultural landscapes. Its mining sector remains a cornerstone of international industrial supply chains, positioning the country as the world's leading silver producer and a top global supplier of copper, zinc, and gold. Geopolitically, this vast resource wealth and industrial output allow Mexico to act as a pivotal corridor between the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe—shrewdly balancing heavy economic integration with North America against a fiercely independent, non-aligned foreign policy.
 

The global aerospace engine humming in North America's backyard—powering

high-altitude innovation and precision engineering across specialized regional hubs.

Yet, the true genius of Mexican society lies in its deep-rooted cultural sovereignty. Alongside its sprawling megacity and industrial centers of glittering skyscrapers, highways, automated factories, and ports, Mexico remains home to more than 23 million Indigenous people from 68 distinct ethnic and non-Spanish-speaking groups. 

 

Just beyond the reach of the modern grid exist communities that have intentionally refused the march of the 21st century—not due to geographic neglect or historical accident, but by conscious, sovereign choice. Across this territory, distinct nations have chosen to preserve a reality that the rest of the Mexican mainstream abandoned decades ago: governing themselves by ancient customary laws, protecting their ecosystems, and guarding an unbroken cosmovision.  

 

The following are 15 examples, out of thousands, of indigenous Mexican communities keeping the profound soul of this megadiverse civilization-state alive with dignity, both in contrast to and alongside the post-modern urban mainstream:

Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca

Less than 30 kilometers south of the city of Oaxaca, nestled in a dry valley surrounded by hills, lies Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec town where practically every family maintains a loom at home. The Zapotecs founded this settlement more than 2,500 years ago, originally naming it Xaguixe, which translates to "at the foot of the hill."

What distinguishes this town from any other is that weaving is not a mere trade; it is the backbone of the entire community's life. Children learn to operate the loom before they learn to read. Weddings, baptisms, and communal festivals are organized around the mayordomía system, a model of governance that predates the arrival of the Spanish and continues to function exactly the same way. 

In Teotitlán, there is no municipal president elected by political parties. Instead, community assemblies dictate all local matters by consensus, from the repair of infrastructure to the organization of the patron saint festival of the Precious Blood of Christ. 

Capulálpam de Méndez, Oaxaca

Hidden among the cloud forests of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Capulálpam de Méndez is a Zapotec town of fewer than 2,000 inhabitants where private land ownership simply does not exist. The entire territory is communal; the forests, the rivers, and the agricultural plots belong to the collective and are managed strictly through the community assembly.

What truly sets Capulálpam apart is its Indigenous Traditional Medicine Center. Far from being a static exhibit, it operates as an active health clinic where Zapotec female healers diagnose and treat patients using herbal medicine, energetic cleansings, therapeutic massages, and temazcales (sweat lodges). This knowledge has been transmitted orally across generations without manuals or academic certifications, passed directly from grandmother to granddaughter. 

The town governs itself through Indigenous Customary Law (Usos y Costumbres), entirely free of political parties. Authorities are elected in community assemblies, and these leadership positions are mandatory and unpaid. When the community elects an individual as a topil (orderly), fiscal, or mayordomo, the role must be fulfilled as a solemn civic service rather than a job. In the 1980s, Capulálpam successfully halted the industrial logging operations threatening its territory and established a community forest management program that has since received international acclaim. Its inhabitants determined that no outside corporation would touch their trees, organizing a self-managed community sawmill governed by strict reforestation rules.

Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca

At the highest point of the Mixe Highlands, at an altitude of nearly 2,500 meters, lies a town where music is not entertainment; it is a way of governing, of communicating, and of existing. Santa María Tlahuitoltepec is the birthplace of the Mixe Philharmonic Band, a community musical tradition that has produced internationally recognized musicians.

Every year, dozens of children and youth enroll in the town's music school (CECAM) to master the clarinet, trumpet, tuba, and saxophone. What echoes through the Mixe mountains is neither jazz nor classical music, but unique native compositions utilizing scales and rhythms that fuse the European brass band tradition with the Mixe worldview. The Mixe people call themselves Ayuujk Jä'äy, "the people of the flowery word." Their language, Mixe or Ayuujk, belongs to the Mixe-Zoquean family and shares no lineage with Zapotec or Náhuatl.

Their governance system relies entirely on the community assembly and tequio—mandatory, unpaid collective labor where all inhabitants contribute workdays for public benefit projects, such as repairing roads, constructing schools, or maintaining the water system. Tequio is strictly non-voluntary; failure to participate results in community sanctions, the stripping of rights, or eventual expulsion from the town. It has functioned this way for centuries and continues to do so today. The Mixe women of Tlahuitoltepec still wear their white huipiles adorned with symmetrical geometric embroidery in red and black that takes weeks to complete. Food is cooked over wood hearths, coffee is cultivated on the hillsides and processed entirely by hand, and time is measured not in minutes, but in planting cycles, patron saint festivals, and rainy seasons.

San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca

On a strip of land so narrow it appears on the verge of breaking apart between the Pacific Ocean and the Upper Lagoon of the Istmo de Tehuantepec lives the Ikoots people. They call themselves "the ones who have the word," having inhabited this peninsula for centuries, predating even the arrival of the Zapotecs to the region.

The Ikoots of San Mateo del Mar are traditionally fishermen, harvesting shrimp in the lagoon during the early hours of dawn using hand-woven cast nets (atarrayas) and artisanal watercraft. The technique remains unaltered: canoes are built from local timber, and before entering the sea—which is revered as a deity rather than a mere resource—they formally request permission. San Mateo del Mar boasts one of the highest language retention rates in all of Mexico; the vast majority of the population speaks their mother tongue, Ombeayiüts, which linguists classify as a language isolate because it has no proven relationship to any other linguistic family on Earth.

Traditional Ikoots homes are constructed from wooden pillars, reeds, and royal palm. Courtyards serve as the hub of family life where visitors are received, fish is dried, and hammocks are strung. The kitchen features a wood-burning hearth and a clay oven (comalón), while the bedrooms remain private spaces where belongings are kept and candles are lit on family altars. Through community assemblies where every resident holds a voice and a vote, this town has resolutely rejected wind energy megaprojects, commercial highways, and any outside intervention threatening its way of life.

Janitzio, Michoacán

In the middle of Lake Pátzcuaro, accessible only by boat, lies the island of Janitzio—a steep hill covered in colorful houses where around 2,500 people live. The vast majority are Purépecha who still fish with the same butterfly nets their ancestors used. These massive, wing-shaped wooden frames are submerged from canoes at dusk, a technique documented for at least 1,500 years that remains the primary method of fishing on the island.

The lake's whitefish, which is increasingly scarce, is prepared in Janitzio's kitchens just as it was centuries ago: fried whole with salt, garlic, and chili. While Janitzio is famous for its Day of the Dead celebration, which attracts thousands of visitors every November, the deep internal reality of this ritual remains intensely private. 

The fishermen cross the lake at night in canoes illuminated by candles to reach the island’s cemetery. There, families spend the entire night beside the graves of their deceased, praying in Purépecha, laying offerings of bread, fruit, and tamales, and lighting hundreds of candles that transform the hillside into a floating constellation. The island features no cars and no ATMs; the streets are steep stairways, and children grow up learning to row before they learn to ride a bicycle.

Angahuan, Michoacán

Upon entering Angahuan, one immediately observes that the houses are not constructed of stone and concrete, but are trojes—traditional Purépecha dwellings made entirely of pine wood, assembled without a single nail, and featuring shingle or plank roofs. Some are more than 150 years old and remain standing. Angahuan is located in the Purépecha Plateau of Michoacán at an altitude of about 2,400 meters.

The primary language heard in its streets is Purépecha, a language isolate that shares no ancestral roots with any other on the continent. This town lives in the shadow of the Parícutin volcano, which emerged directly in the cornfield of a peasant named Dionisio Pulido in February 1943.

The eruption destroyed the neighboring town of San Juan Parangaricutiro, but Angahuan survived. Its inhabitants continued cooking over wood hearths, cultivating corn and beans on family plots, carving wood with traditional tools, and organizing their lives through the community cargo system, which explicitly defines civic duties and responsibilities. The women of Angahuan wear their traditional clothing daily: dark pleated skirts, embroidered aprons, and blue rebozos (shawls). Rather than a costume reserved for visitors, it remains the standard attire for the market, domestic work, and community life.

Cherán, Michoacán

What happened in Cherán in 2011 is unprecedented in modern Mexican history. The Purépecha women of this town of roughly 16,000 residents rose up one April morning and blockaded the streets with logs and stones. They detained the logging trucks that were plundering their forests and expelled the illegal loggers linked to organized crime, achieving this without weapons, police forces, or government aid.

Since that day, Cherán has practiced complete self-governance. The town abolished political parties, dissolved the municipal police force, and created its own community security system featuring permanent bonfires (parhankas) on every corner, manned in shifts by neighbors. Decisions are made in neighborhood assemblies across the town's four barrios, and a High Council (Consejo Mayor) composed of representatives from each neighborhood coordinates the general governance. This model of indigenous self-governance was legally recognized by the Federal Electoral Tribunal, validating Cherán's right to elect its leaders through Customary Law without political parties or campaign trails. 

Cherán has reforested more than 20,000 hectares of forest since 2011 using its own community nursery. The Community Round (Ronda Comunitaria) patrols the streets and logging trails 24 hours a day, and daily life follows the timeless Purépecha rhythm: wood-burning hearths, handmade tortillas, patron saint festivals featuring the Dance of the Old Men (Danza de los Viejitos), pirekuas sung in Purépecha, and a rich sense of community cohesion.

San Juan Chamula, Chiapas

Just 10 kilometers northwest of San Cristóbal de las Casas exists a town that operates under its own laws, government, religion, and unique worldview. The Tzotzil community of San Juan Chamula represents one of the most enigmatic socio-political structures in the country, possessing a de facto autonomy that the Mexican state recognizes. Constitutional authorities do not intervene in the internal structure of this town, which is governed by a system of rotating civil-religious offices (cargos), community assemblies, and ancient customary laws.

Entering the Church of San Juan Bautista in Chamula is a remarkably striking experience. Inside, there are no pews, no formal Catholic Mass, and no resident priest presiding over daily affairs. The floor is covered entirely in pine needles, and thousands of candles of all sizes and colors burn directly on the ground. Entire families pray on their knees in Tzotzil, whispering supplications and performing healing rituals led by iloles (traditional healers) using live chickens, pox (a traditional sugarcane distillate), and carbonated sodas used to induce belching—which, according to Tzotzil belief, expels evil spirits from the body. Taking photographs inside the church is strictly forbidden; violations result in the confiscation of equipment, heavy fines, or immediate expulsion from the community, as traditional belief dictates that a photograph captures a portion of an individual's soul.

The ceremonial calendar is extensive: the Carnival of Chamula (K'in Tajimoltik), which lasts 5 days, includes processions, dances, and fire rituals unique to this region. Education is conducted in Tzotzil, conflicts are resolved internally, and daily life revolves around a cosmovision where the Sun is the primary deity, syncretized with Christ but understood in a manner completely distinct from orthodox Catholic doctrine.

Stranded on the northern margins of San Cristóbal de las Casas, however, a community of Tzotzil Muslims stunningly redefined indigenous identity—a shift stemming from late-20th-century religious expulsions, when thousands were exiled from San Juan Chamula for adopting Gringo-Protestantism. Seeking communal alignment, these families encountered Spanish Sufis rooted in the Darqawi-Shadhili tradition and Murabitun World Movement—an order heavily focused on critiquing Western global capitalism, usury, and the banking system. Their leader, Aureliano Pérez Yruela (Sheikh Muhammad Nafi'a), had initially attempted to convert the foot soldiers of the obscure, Post-Marxist Zapatista guerrilla (EZLN) to Islam.

Today, in neighborhoods like Nueva Esperanza, the Adhan (call to prayer) resonates in Tzotzil from the mosque, and the Quran structures the life of the largest local Muslim community in all of Mexico—free of social misconduct, drug addiction, crime, and the pathologies of Protestantism and Marxism. Men pair traditional wool tunics with kufis, while women adapt the hijab using hand-woven Mayan shawls. Viewing Islam as a return to pre-colonial purity, they map the global Ummah onto ancestral Mayan collective responsibility, and blend their ancient prophecy with universal Islamic brotherhood.

Zinacantán, Chiapas

Ten kilometers west of San Cristóbal, lies a Tzotzil town where the men wear capes embroidered with massive pink and purple flowers as standard everyday attire rather than ceremonial costume. Zinacantán means "place of bats" in Náhuatl, but for its inhabitants, the name in Tzotzil is Sots'leb.

This town is dedicated to the cultivation of flowers, especially carnations and roses, which supply markets throughout the region. The greenhouses are rustic, constructed of plastic and wood, but the volume of production is immense. What makes Zinacantán distinct is that the entire cycle of life revolves around a religious system that blends the Maya worldview with Catholic elements into a unique synthesis. The saints are not viewed as plaster statues, but as living entities; inhabitants dress them in new attire periodically, converse with them, request favors, and demand accountability if the harvests fail.

The office of mayordomo is mandatory for all adult men and can last up to an entire year, during which the individual must personally fund festivals, food, and ceremonies for the whole community. To refuse the office is to reject community membership itself. The women weave their huipiles on backstrap looms with floral brocades that require months of labor to complete. Each design carries a ritual meaning passed down from mother to daughter, held strictly within the community.

Lacanjá Chansayab, Chiapas

In the heart of the Lacandon Jungle, where the canopy is so dense that sunlight rarely touches the forest floor, lives a group of  Lacandons considered to be direct descendants of the Classic-period Maya who were never conquered by the Aztecs nor the Spanish. The Lacandons of Lacanjá Chansayab maintained their absolute isolation well into the 20th century.

When anthropologists arrived for the first time to document their way of life in the 1950s, they found families living in palm-frond huts, wearing long white cotton tunics, practicing rituals in hidden stone temples deep in the jungle, and speaking a variant of Maya that was unheard anywhere else. Today, the Lacandons of Lacanjá still wear their traditional white tunics, burn copal incense in clay censers they fashion themselves, and maintain a relationship with the jungle that goes far beyond economic utility.

For the Lacandons, every tree, river, and animal possesses a spiritual guardian from whom permission must be requested before anything is taken. Their milpas—the plots where they grow corn, beans, chilies, and squash—are cultivated using the traditional slash-and-burn (roza, tumba y quema) system that the Maya utilized 5,000 years ago. A section of the jungle is cleared, the dry vegetation is burned, crops are planted for two or three cycles, and then the land is left fallow for years so the jungle can fully regenerate. It is the exact same cycle, repeated generation after generation.

San Pablito, Pahuatlán, Puebla

In the Sierra Norte of Puebla, nestled in a ravine where the fog rolls in so thick that visibility is frequently reduced to a few meters, sits San Pablito, an Otomí town of about 4,000 inhabitants that preserves one of the oldest artisan traditions in Mesoamerica: the manufacturing of bark paper (papel amate). Amate paper is produced from the bark of the jonote tree, which is boiled for hours, beaten with volcanic stones until it turns into thin sheets, and left to dry in the Sun.

The Otomís of San Pablito have been producing this paper since long before the arrival of the Spanish, when it was used for codices and for ceremonial figures that shamans cut out to represent spirits and deities. That practice remains fully active today. The healers of San Pablito still cut out amate paper figures for rituals of healing, cleansing, and protection. The figures represent the spirits of the wind, the rain, the corn, and disease.

They are placed on domestic altars alongside copal incense, flowers, and sugarcane liquor, utilized in ceremonies that blend pre-Hispanic elements with prayers spoken in an Otomí dialect that remains uncodified by outside linguistics. The Hñähñu language, the native tongue of the Otomís, remains the primary language of the streets, markets, and ceremonies. The town elders act as guardians of this ritual knowledge, and each new generation learns the cutting techniques and ceremonial prayers orally, without written texts.

Cuetzalan del Progreso, Puebla

Cuetzalan is located in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, permanently shrouded in a dense mist that gives the town a stark, timeless appearance. The streets are steep cobblestone, red tile roofs emerge from among giant ferns, and the aroma of freshly roasted coffee characterizes the entire urban landscape.

Here live the Nahuas of the Sierra, a people who preserve an extensive array of ancestral traditions. Cuetzalan’s Sunday market continues to operate on an active system of barter (trueque). Nahua women arrive with baskets of wild mushrooms, medicinal herbs, tropical fruits, and hand-embroidered textiles, exchanging them for other goods without currency changing hands. It is a commercial system at least 500 years old, remaining the preferred method of trade for many families in the region. The women wear the quexquémitl daily—a garment woven on a backstrap loom with designs that vary distinctly by community. Upon their heads, they wear the tlacoyal, a headdress made of coiled wool yarn that forms a voluminous turban. The men dress in unbleached cotton trousers (manta), white shirts, and traditional hats.

Every week, in front of the Parish of San Francisco, the Voladores of Cuetzalan execute the ritual dance of the flyers. Four men launch themselves from the top of a 30-meter pole, secured by their feet with ropes, spinning upside down while a fifth musician plays a flute and a drum at the absolute summit. The ceremony is an offering to the four cardinal points and the Sun, performed continuously in this mountain range for centuries. Sunday Mass in the parish is celebrated in Náhuatl. Local healers continue to prescribe medicinal plants from the surrounding tropical forest, and during the heavy rainy season, when dirt roads become impassable, Cuetzalan remains functionally isolated, retaining the structural detachment it always possessed.

Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, Jalisco

To reach Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, one must navigate hours of winding dirt roads through the Sierra Madre Occidental, crossing ravines devoid of bridges and climbing to altitudes where the climate changes drastically. 

This is Wixárika territory, a highly guarded society historically known outside its borders as the Huichol, representing one of the indigenous groups that have resisted outside influence with the fiercest determination. Their language, their ceremonies, their deep cosmological relationship with the Earth, and their clothing—intricately embroidered with vibrant glass beads (chaquira)—remain essentially identical to pre-Conquest records. 

The epicenter of their spiritual life is the annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta, a sacred desert in San Luis Potosí located more than 500 kilometers away. Pilgrims walk for weeks to gather peyote, a cactus with hallucinogenic properties that the Wixárikas revere as sacred and utilize in ceremonies guided by the mara'akame, the community shaman.   

This pilgrimage remains the most vital religious act of the Wixárika year, executed continuously for centuries. In Santa Catarina, houses are built strictly of adobe and stone. Children learn to weave "eyes of god" (tsikuri) and create yarn and bead art as foundational cultural knowledge before entering formal classrooms. The elders serve as the supreme moral authorities of the town, and their rulings carry absolute precedence over state jurisprudence.

Rarámuri Settlements of the Urique Canyon, Chihuahua

Deep within the Urique Canyon system—a network of gorges four times larger than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado river—live Rarámuri communities that barely register on official censuses or modern cartography. These are not merely remote villages with difficult access, but isolated family units living in cliffs and caves that can only be reached by trekking for days along narrow trails on the edge of 1,800-meter abysses.

Families here do not speak Spanish. They plant corn on tiny terraces carved directly into the rock using traditional wood and stone tools, measuring time solely by the position of the Sun and the phases of the Moon. Representing the ultimate isolation within the mountain range, their daily reality is one where water is hauled from creeks in clay vessels, clothing is washed in mountain rivers, sustenance depends entirely on seasonal rain-fed crops, and nights are cast in absolute darkness due to the complete absence of the electrical grid.

The Rarámuri of the deepest canyons have repeatedly rejected external state programs offering relocation to serviced communities, maintaining a consistent stance: "This land is ours, this way of living is ours." To survive the changing seasons, families practice vertical transhumance, migrating down into the depths of the gorges to escape the winter freeze and climbing back to the temperate peaks during the summer heat, precisely mirroring the migratory cycles of their ancestors.

Norogachi, Chihuahua

To reach Norogachi, one must venture deep into the Sierra Tarahumara, one of the most rugged and isolated mountain systems on the North American continent. This is a land of abyssal canyons, pine forests stretching to the horizon, and winter temperatures that plunge well below -20°C.

The Rarámuri people who inhabit this region call themselves "the light-footed ones," a name reflecting their capability to run distances exceeding 200 kilometers across punishing, vertical terrain. They run in traditional huaraches made of tire tread or leather, entirely without athletic footwear, synthetic supplements, or timing devices. In Norogachi and the remote homesteads scattered through the surrounding gorges, many families continue to live in natural caves outfitted with stone walls and wooden roofs by deliberate preference. These caves maintain a stable, insulated temperature year-round, having served as traditional shelters for centuries.

Life is structured around the seasons and the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. The ceremonial centerpiece is tesgüino, a fermented corn beer prepared for all community gatherings, religious feasts, and tesgüinadas—events that function simultaneously as collective work parties and vital social institutions. The siríame (the traditional governor) presides over Sunday meetings, resolves internal disputes, and organizes community rituals. The Rarámuri practice their syncretic faith, blending Catholic elements adopted from early Jesuit missionaries with songs, ceremonies, and dances—such as the matachines or pascoleros—rooted in pre-Hispanic traditions.

Following the transition from the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535-1821) to independent Mexico (1821), the short-lived First Mexican Empire peaked by stretching from Las Californias and Nuevo México down to Costa Rica. However, the empire's collapse (1823) triggered the immediate secession of its Central American territories. By 1853, through the Texas Annexation (1836–1845), the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), and the Gadsden Purchase (1853), Mexico had also surrendered over half of its remaining northern landmass to the United States—a vast expanse of 2.44 million square kilometers that today comprises California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

This sweeping conquest of northern Mexico brought catastrophic consequences for the region's 450 Indigenous peoples. Within the former Viceroyalty of New Spain, they had possessed explicit legal status and protected communal and territorial rights under imperial law for centuries.

Now, driven by their racist and genocidal ideology of Manifest Destiny that relied on the bogus concept of terra nullius—the myth that the land was essentially empty and waiting to be "improved" through the divine mission of a master race—the US abruptly stripped away all prior legal protections, exposing three million Indigenous inhabitants to aggressive physical displacement and a programmatic, state-sanctioned slaughter and extermination.

Today, Mexico's indigenous peoples maintain ways of life that the urban mainstream abandoned generations ago—and are exercising levels of autonomy and freedom completely unthinkable, and long since systematically wiped out in the Western world, just across Mexico's current northern border, through racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, "native reservations", "reserves", Protestant-Evangelical spiritual submission, "Indian boarding schools", and eugenics.