One local teacher said this decision "affects first of all our soul, our identity." Teotihuakan is home to some of the most significant pyramids on earth, including the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. It has not only been used as a ceremonial site by Mexican indigenous groups for years, but also by Native peoples from all across the Americas. In a recent solstice celebration, half a million people congregated at the Pyramid of the Sun to commemorate the vital importance of this site to Native culture and traditions throughout the hemisphere. Others have built Mexika indigenous schools near the site to re-claim and re-teach the ancient cosmologies, languages, and arts of the Mexika-Tolteka peoples with close to two thousand years of existence in Teotihuakan.

Although the Spanish destroyed most of the Mexika culture--including the priceless temples, schools, libraries, menageries, gardens, marketplaces, and also many of the people--when Hernan Cortez conquered the area in 1521, the Mexika and other indigenous traditions continued to thrive in Mexico for close to five hundred years. Within the last thirty years, indigenous people in Mexico have re-united and re-organized to demand their land, their survival, and their dignity. The most salient expression of this is the Zapatista insurgency in southern Chiapas, which awoke the world to the plight of indigenous people there and everywhere.

Yet, while indigenous people continue to thrive in a world that has colonized them, killed them, starved them, and tried to eliminate their cultures, the influx of commercial interests in a land with many unemployed and underemployed people may be the most devastating encounter yet. Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation, has offered jobs in a place where few jobs exist. It has offered access to cheap goods where such goods are unavailable. The community there is conflicted on whether to allow Wal-Mart to continue or to stop it at whatever costs. "This is a development opportunity," a town official said. "We need water, drainage, pavement, schools."

Others disagree: "This is a classic case of modern corporate greed against the traditional cultural values of a society," said Al Norman, a U.S. author/activist and long-time Wal-Mart foe. "American tourists can go from the monuments to the Wal-Mart and buy a rubber pyramid made in Beijing." Already a Hotel Quinta Sol stands next to the new Wal-Mart site; nearby, Coca-Cola has a broken billboard and the Elektra Electronics chain has put up a huge yellow sign. The wheels of commerce continue to sweep everything before it--to these corporations, nothing is sacred, nothing is permanent, and nothing is substantially meaningful, except their profits.

This is indeed a battle for the soul and dignity of a people. Everyone should oppose such developments, feeding off the past to destroy the future. Wal-Marts may come and go,
but Teotihuakan is forever.

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Luis J. Rodriguez is editor of Xispas Magazine and cofounder of Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural.