On September 25th, 2025, Dr. Graciela Alcántara-Salinas lead a virtual guest lecture for the Urban Bird Project entitled, “TOLTECAYOTL Exploring connections between a Mesoamerican cosmovision and permaculture and ornithology in Oaxaca.”
Dr. Alcántara-Salinas is an ethnobiologist who studies the importance of Toltecayotl in contemporary Mexican agricultural and ethnoornithological practices. She carries on this work in honor and memoriam of her mentor Lobo Dorado-Oso Blanco Adolfo Fernandez Tellez. Dr. Alcántara-Salinas describes Tolteka and the Toltec taken from the Codice Matritense as “… wise, he is a light, a torch, a thick torch that never smokes. He makes other people’s faces wise, he makes them take heart. He doesn’t pass over things: he stops, reflects, observes.”
Dr. Alcántara-Salinas led an engaging discussion with the students of the Fall 2025 Community-Based Research Methods in Environmental Justice course, where she talked about her own personal journey into academia and mentorship with the honorable Lobo Dorado-Oso Blanco Adolfo Fernandez Tellez. She discussed ways in which Toltecayotl is still alive in Mexico today and focused on how birds are a significant part of this practice. She went on to introduce the group to a multidimensional model of classification for birds based as how they’re grouped by different characteristics and qualities, such as habitat, behavior, morphology, and association to humans. Graciela provided examples of how specific bird species or groups hold certain cultural implications for conservation through a holistic vision and related this back to the Zapotec language and traditional words for birds. She concluded per presentation by explaining the historical structure of Toltecayotl and integration of the milpa and permaculture as a science.