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_{Welcome ● Bienvenidos ● 歡迎 ● Tlanextlihqueh Nohcnihuan}

Fifteen years ago, 139 children ages 5 years to 8 assembled on a chilly fall morning in the empty courts of El Sereno Park. Parents, teachers and children all nervously anticipated the start of the first day of the first public charter elementary school in East Los Angeles. With no building to hold classes in, Academia Semillas del Pueblo began in an abandoned recreation room of a city park, carting classroom supplies out to the yard daily. Children first enrolled in kinder 2002 graduated from high school in 2016. We are honored to have been entrusted with their lives and livelihoods for over a decade and now celebrate the commencement of their paths as adult members of our communities and sovereign nations. 

Xinaxcalmecac Academia Semillas del Pueblo was born out of a great concern for the harmonious regeneration of Indigenous Peoples on this continent. Semillas del Pueblo emerged from the hearts of mothers, fathers, and teachers who took that first step thirteen years ago who organized a resistance to English-only laws in the State of California in effect to this day that prohibit maternal language education. Semillas emerged from forgotten barrios, abandoned buildings, neglected city parks, dumpsters made libraries, overcrowded schools, beneath compassionate trees, below ancient hills, blanketed by the thunder and rains of a southern California sky. Today, we may not all remember those days.

"Even what is made of jade, breaks. Even what is made of gold, tears." 

In 2016, all of our campuses merged into our current autonomous school design, Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory of North America. The privilege of being a temachtiani in Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory is an uncommon calling. Vision, passion and commitment are requirements. The honor of being a xinaxtli in Anahuacalmecac is also uncommon. Dedication, cultivation and dreaming are basic expectations. Here, in this place, whosoever enters seeking a place of ease, begins ones exit upon arrival. Whosoever places the seeds of our people before themselves and their own needs merits honor and respect. "Only here a while," said the young grandfather. How will we have lived our lives? To love, thrive, learn, give, dream, play, dance, walk, and travel on the morning path towards the sunrise of a new sun tracing the steps of the ants that came before us. That is how we become rooted, united and organized like the fingers of our hand.

Yoloxochitl nelhuayotl

The flower blooms from the root,

Beauty is born of truth,

The seed blossoms,

It awakens

The people of maize.

Life is rooted in earth.