Here you can find the various issues of Sacred Hoop to which I have contributed. To read them, please follow the link to the official website.
Make the Ancestors dance
Sacred Hoop Magazine n.131 (2026)
And almost at the same moment when the marimbas were playing in Santiago, a flotilla of Indigenous boats were cutting through the rivers of the Amazon; boats full of women and men from distant villages, navigating to tell the powerful of the Earth that without the forest there is no future.
Between 2024 and 2025 I was given many books about the Amazon, but the one that comes to mind now is ‘Amazzonia: una vita nel cuore della foresta’ by Emanuela Evangelista.Evangelista is a biologist and environmental activist, and in her book she explains that if even 20% of the Amazon forest disappears, irreversible changes will begin – changes that could turn the planet’s green lung into a sparse savannah.
What would happen to the world if that process were set in motion?
Indigenous traditions have always said it: everything is connected. Fortunately, science now says so too; and science, not economics, should have the right to speak first at a place like COP30.
Coca-Cola, Christ and Cultural Resistance
Sacred Hoop Magazine n.127 (2025)
Coca-Cola has become part of local rites for both political and symbolic reasons.
The bubbles are believed to expel negative energies through burping. The sugar gives a sense of strength and medicine.
In San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, Coca-Cola is not just a drink — it’s an offering to the dead, a component in healing rituals, and a metaphor for an invisible cultural war.
Yet, one scene stays with me:
A curandero performs a cleansing with three eggs. His patient is not indigenous, but a mestizo from the capital. And unlike other ceremonies, there’s no Coca-Cola on the altar.
Has the tide turned? Or is it just a pause between sips?
A Fire of Hope
Sacred Hoop Magazine n.125 (2024)
During my subsequent visits, I saw a Mayan altar rise in that place, a ceremonial area, dedicated to the sacred fire.
Initially, it was just a charred spot on the stone of the square, with flower petals scattered around. Then, trip after trip, I saw it transform into a large colourful circle, surrounded by 41 crosses with names written on them…
The altar of Belejeb Ix — ‘Nine Jaguar’ — was born from a tragedy, but became a fire of resistance, remembrance and healing. Its keeper, Doña Lola, is a spiritual guide who responds to accusations of witchcraft with the quiet strength of ancestral wisdom.
“The Mayan Cosmovision is not for the few,” she says. “It is a gift to humanity.”
The Village in the Province of Dreams
Sacred Hoop Magazine n.124 (2024)
One morning in the tropical autumn — which resembled European summer in every way — I was accompanied by Dolores Ratzàn through the narrow streets of Santiago Atitlán, which led to the cofradía of San Nicolás, home at that time to the idol of Maximón, a Maya deity…
The Mayans consider the current neoliberalism to actually be the fifth attempt at colonial plundering, and despite this, and despite the genocidal incursions of the Army, they still occupy the lands of their ancestors; and this has been possible because the root of the Maya people is not in the ‘world of history,’ but instead in the timeless ‘world of myth.’