California Teachers To Lead Students In Aztec Chants To God Of Human Sacrifice In New Curriculum

Last Updated on March 13, 2021

California is set to vote on a new curriculum for K-12 students, even as it faces criticism for promoting the belief that Europeans destroyed native religions with Christianity, and for one particularly troubling lesson: Teachers will lead students in an Aztec chant meant to please a god of human sacrifice.

In its reading materials about the new K-12 curriculum’s focus on “ethnic studies,” the California Department of Education makes a series of confusing and troubling remarks about race. For example, it declares that while Mexican American students may be descended from Native Americans, they should not be included in this ethnicity, because “While Mexican Americans and Latina/o/x Americans have native ancestry, their indigenous histories are addressed in the Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x course outline.”

They also suggest the use of Latinx, because even though Spanish is a gendered language with different endings for male, -o, or female, -a, names, it, “The recent use of “x” is done for two purposes. The first “x” in Xicanx replaces the “ch” because the sound produced by “x” is much more in line with the Náhuatl language and indigenous etymologies. The second “x” renders the term gender-neutral and more inclusive of all identities.”

Again, this is written as the California Department of Education would also seemingly argue that the Náhuatl language should not matter when teaching about “Latinx” culture, because Náhuatl would be covered under Native American studies.

The document also suggests that teachers bring elements of these ethnic studies to seemingly unrelated classes. “For example, a geography teacher might develop a unit or lesson around urban geography, where students can delve into key concepts like environmental racism and ecological justice, and focus on the experiences of people of color in those spaces.”

However, the most troubling element would seem to be the veneration of an Aztec god of human sacrifice. The Epoch Times reported:

In the community chant of “In Lak Ech,” which translates to “You Are My Other Me,” teachers are instructed to first lead the group of students in chanting and clapping to Tezkatlipoka, a cannibalistic wizard-god who, according to the Aztec tradition, brought the downfall to the Toltec civilization in favor of the human-sacrificing Aztecs.

The students then chant to other deities including Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god, seeking “healing epistemologies” and a “revolutionary spirit.” Seeing themselves as people of the sun, the Aztecs believed that Huitzilopochtli needed daily nourishment of human blood and hearts, and brutally sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people in offering to him.

The chant ends with a request for “liberation, transformation, decolonization,” after which students shout “Panche beh! Panche beh!” which translates to “seeking the roots of the truth” or “think critically.”

The document also contains a video meant to illustrate what a chant to an Aztec god of cannibalism and human sacrifice could look like in an academic setting.

Christopher Rufo, the journalist who first exposed the most troubling elements of the proposed K-12 curriculum, says the curriculum is inspired by “calls for the ‘decolonization’ of American society,” and that colonization must be countered by “a ‘countergenocide’ against white Christians.”

https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1369773388957327361

“The chants have a clear implication: the displacement of the Christian god, which is said to be an extension of white supremacist oppression, and the restoration of the indigenous gods to their rightful place in the social justice cosmology. It is, in a philosophical sense, a revenge of the gods,” wrote Rufo. “The religious element of the ethnic studies curriculum, with direct appeals to Aztec gods, is almost certainly a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Public schools are prohibited from leading state-sanctioned Christian prayers; they would presumably be similarly prohibited from leading state-sanctioned chants to the Aztec god of human sacrifice.”