Tochan, “The House of All of Us”: Decolonizing Space through Nahua Oral Narratives

ABSTRACT Mapping is an established practice by which people represent, explore, and share their understandings of geography. While cartographic products have become the dominant medium for this, there are many ways of expressing spatial knowledge, providing a rich opportunity to understand different forms in which people recreate, navigate, and understand their landscape. This research explores how Nahuas in Mixtla de Altamirano, Veracruz, Mexico, build tochan, their space called “house,” and how this knowledge is transmitted orally over time. This shows the potential that oral narratives have to inform and decolonize historical and archaeological knowledge and to lead us to revaluate our own spatial thinking.