NEWS CENTER – The Network of Ancestral Healers was born in Iximulew, in 2013, and went public on October 12, 2015, on the Day of Resistance and Dignification of the ancestral and native peoples of Abya Yala. It was created by native Maya women, defenders of life who, in order to fight, lived – and live – experience of criminalization, political persecution and political risk. The active members of the Network unite their healing knowledge to accompany other women who are seriously threatened for defending their territories.
These actions “are about a community fabric, which was born in the mountain of Xalapán, in the northeastern part of Guatemala, where since 2004, prior to the Network of Healers, the slogans ‘My body is my first territory of defense’ and ‘Defense of the territory-body-earth’ emerged,” says Lorena Kab’nal, with a soft and firm voice.
The women of the Network were pioneers in raising resistance with marches, walks, denunciations, but also with the agreement of healing as a Cosmic Political Path. When this body gets sick in the face of so many injustices, so many indignations, so much violence,” says Lorena, “when we are affected emotionally, physically and spiritually, we need to be lovingly supported with the wisdom of our ancestors, the strength of nature and the love between women.
Together with Lorena, Chahim and the other political allies of the Network in the Q’eqchi’ Maya territory, we gathered in Iximulew for hours and hours around the fire, sharing an energetic healing process. The dialogue we maintained weaves the experience of resistance in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) with that of the territorial fighters in Guatemala, experiences that travel between ancestral memory and the dignity of the loving and plural rebellion of women who defend life.
– How was the Ancestral Healers Network born?
Lorena: It arose in a political moment of ruptures, of ruptures with urban kaxlan feminism (urban feminism of NGOs), to strengthen the proposal of Community-Territorial Feminism, to heal the territory-body-earth from an anti-patriarchal struggle, from within Mayan territories, in daily spaces of communal life. Many times we have been accused, by several feminists, of reversing our political energy with Mayan men. We are in communal spaces, where corporal political presence manifests its plurality. It is in ceremonial spaces where girls, boys, children, grandmothers, grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfathers, leaders, indigenous authorities and midwives, among others, coexist. I was bringing to my conscience that the community has many plural ancestral relations of life. The ancestral peoples have another code of the relationship of life in the community, and that is where we dispute as territorial community feminists: the decoding of machismo, of violence against women, of misogyny from our cosmogonies, that is, from how we feel and think about life, therefore from where we see the disharmony of life in the bodies and the earth.
For us, it is important to see that the tissues of the community are plural for life and it is not that we are spending our energy in transforming the relationship with our partners. I publicly announce myself as a feminist, and being a feminist in the community, and naming yourself as such in Iximulew, is complex, it can be dangerous, it has risks, because it is an alienation if you say it as it is. It is not the same as a white, academic, Kaxlan feminist body that comes to dialogue with the community that does not speak Spanish. Why does the community have to integrate concepts in Spanish to unveil its reality, at what time do we explain patriarchy and with theoretical categories of Western feminisms? This has led me to see that there are relations of communal life that we have to see clearly: of property, of control of machismo, but we are the original women who, with epistemic authority over our communal life, propose our emancipations from our cosmogonies of harmonization of life. That is why, today, it is politically non-negotiable that they come to protect us, to tell us how to defend our bodies and the land from theoretical categories, which are questioned, for example, when there are evictions and we are absent. We are only the communities, among communities, agreeing, fighting, against the neocolonial death of the extractive industries.
Any feminism is questioned in native territories if it comes to protect us. In this case, we speak of hegemonic feminisms and we do not want more hegemony in this body-earth territory if they want to tell us how we should emancipate ourselves. Many, among radical feminists, for example, have questioned the presence of trans sisters, intersex sisters, among us. Any feminism that wants to order our life in community is questioned by us.
Our Network promotes meetings of healing consciousness of women only, but, at the same time, we live life in community and we have epistemic-political and territorial authority not only in the spaces of healing among women, but also in mixed groups. And we emphasize that plural bodies exist here. Because here, life is plural by principle of cosmogony. Our temporality is walking in community and we do not have to debate or impose. We are tired of the nebulous hegemonic, academic, onegeist and cooperative Western feminist theorists: Western feminist rationality is so naturalized that they have stripped us of the political feeling for life. Because epistemic theoretical forms of rationalization are not solving problems. They are beautiful, they are necessary. But we question whether they are vital, because every day the body drinks water, eats fruit, seed. And how can this be sustained if not with the relationship of life with the land? And what are we doing with the forest and with water?
– What is the work you are doing as a Network?
Lorena: We start from the awakening of women’s healing memory. It is very vital to share knowledge among women, which strengthens and agrees with us, and to bring the ancestral memory of women with their ways of inhabiting the territories, because these are also resistances that are sometimes not named with awareness. Many western medical practices are naturalized, but vital elements are left aside when we talk about the knowledge that our grandmothers wove in the resistance of women, in the context of the counterinsurgent war, for example.
It is so complex because indignation and fear are internalized and the body generates an impressive system of alerts. Because we are surrounded by so many situations of risk to life, that the indignations provoked by the patriarchal system, colonialism, racism, neoliberalism and war are harbored in the organs. We somatize. The patriarchal system is not abstract: it is as real and concrete in our bodies. Cancers, for example, have a lot to do with the patriarchal force on highly polluted territories and women’s bodies permanently exposed to pollution and violence.
The Network states that a feminism that does not assume the self-determination of land and bodies has no political sustainability as a theoretical current. We cannot speak of self-determined free emancipated bodies if these bodies are eating transgenic corn or living in a territory of extended monoculture. The proposal of healing as a cosmic-political path is to recover the knowledge of the women who have preceded us in the resistance in these territories, or those of contemporary native women who, from their knowledge of lunar phases, solar and lunar calendar times, herbs, seeds, ceremonies, words, silence, and the use of the word of God, seeds, ceremonies, words, silences, songs, smokes, incense, rests, meditation, gatherings, dance, flowers, infusions, baths, oils and ancestral medicine, we have put them together and elaborated a fabric of healing, to chingar with pleasure the patriarchal system and to heal the bodies and the earth.
While we are in the process of meetings, the sisters who come with us to heal, enjoy, release and regain vitality and energy: we do a lot of catharsis, and this can be a very collaborative element. There are times when the sisters are going through a very complex personal situation and need to be supported by us. It is very important to listen, to agree, because the word is something over which the patriarchal system has exercised a lot of power. But the spoken word, enunciated with consciousness, also heals the pain we have. When we say cosmic-political path, in connection with the wisdom of our grandmothers, we bring them to our spaces. We awaken the healing memory by summoning the older grandmothers, whether they call themselves feminists or not, whatever paths they come with, to feel with our heart. And we have the love and patience in reciprocity to listen to them for many hours, and they tell us everything, and from there they return to their communities with our feelings, with our sharing as well. Then, their loving patience with other women continues to weave itself to heal so much violence suffered.
This is very radical here, because women, in their plurality of being, often have indigenous essentialisms, and sometimes in the ceremonies it is not given to them to touch the fire: But here we welcome the energies to heal life, to heal the bodily and political presence of all women in their plurality of existences, and that is where we agree with the grandmothers, midwives, and when we open a ceremony we also call the ancestors, we invoke the grandfathers who taught us to plant corn, grandfathers who never touched the body of a girl, who cared for her, respected and loved her. Even when men see us so strong among us, their dynamics and energy change to another dimension of consciousness, and they see among us a lot of agreement and joy in intimacy, which they were denied. It is then that they feel, and their feeling becomes political, and we take the opportunity to reflect on it so that they assume their dimensions to be healed. Here, and in other territories, the defense of the territory-body-land is a proposal that is very internalized with the struggle, the walks, the marches.
– I think of the experience in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), and how vital it was, after the revolution, to see the liberated territory come to life in its communes, among different communities and spiritualities outside of homogenizing pretensions after years of Islamic law and Syrian regime, with the plurality and diversity of expression of each community put at the basis of life. In this dimension, health promoters, such as our colleague Alina Sanchez – who chose the Kurdish name Lȇgȇrîn, which means “search” – shared healing processes based on joy, outside of positivist medicine, leaving behind an emergent perspective. All this community health work in Rojava was also accompanied by the practice of collective and ritual reflection of tekmil: criticism and self-criticism as a space to express needs from a deep and collective listening, where if one moves away because she is not well, she can, anyway, count on the closeness and support of all.
Chahim: I think it resonates with the importance we give to temporalities: how to create political temporalities. Because we are always in moments of emergency, and that is why we accumulate fatigue, physical, spiritual and emotional affectations. While you were talking about tekmil, I was thinking that in resistance the point is also how to know how to respect personal and communal temporalities. These political temporalities require our political patience and to respect our actions and self-determinations. While the important point of criticism is to know how to weave it lovingly, when perhaps what we have to do sometimes is just to respect and nothing more, and to contain ourselves. And to know how to discern, when we are the ones who have to take this time to be more on the side or in an inner, intimate, deep work, with our consciences and our personal actions, which become communal. I believe that both movements are necessary, because the collective is sometimes inhabited from the ego. A challenge as organized women is how to genuinely not inhabit the collective from individualism, but to go with a temporality that leads us to sit among ourselves and with the grandmothers, that leads us to spiritual spaces, to dance. Not out of duty but because we feel it is necessary, and how to create these possibilities of temporality and to put intentions and love in these moments.
I think that something that we have walked is that our healing is a deep personal act, which becomes communal, because we live in community, but it is deep personal because it depends on the strength and energy that we put in our plural processes. And when we see that someone is falling, we are there to put our shoulder to the wheel, accompanying, but without invading. I have imagined scenes of what we have lived here, with respect to how the heart and sexuality of women walk. I have the feeling that many times we live our emotional co-dependencies very hurt, still longing for patriarchal figures in the heart, in bed, in feelings. We are always romanticizing the possibility of finding something like that, and in this sense our healing paths have been very beautiful in this awakening of another healing memory. It gives us a lot of strength to recognize the healing plurality, in plural temporalities and in plural corporealities, in Iximulew’s territory.
Lorena: I think it is historic to find ourselves in a moment like this and in much plurality. It is still going to take us indigenous peoples a while longer, because we have built an extremely heteronormative interpretation, very internalized and very naturalized in the indigenous uses and customs. That is why it is so wonderful when in other territorial spaces we come together with great strength, because there you will find sisters of all ages, different histories and paths, women of plural corporealities, plural sexualities, plural identities, with a very beautiful political setting of the defense of the territory-body. There we put the feeling of the plurality of bodies as a principle of cosmogony, so it is not denied, it is not debated by the community, it is greeted, embraced and woven. The companions enter into another dimension of consciousness among men in relation to us and nosotres.
Because to heal is also to heal the look between us, in how we feel and perceive ourselves. And because we do not agree with the radical feminist hegemonic positions of not making visible the other manifestations of corporality that exist in the communities: our communities are plural by principle of cosmogony.
– With the Jineolojî, the social science of the women of Kurdistan, there are profoundly anti-normative resignifications in the face of essentialisms. In order to understand how heteropatriarchy acts, dialogues have been opened, meetings between dissident communities, processes of struggle from different parts of the world, reflecting collectively, taking up what Chahim said about how we liberate life from love.
Lorena: Because healings are very plural. They not only look at the body, but they heal the spirit and the naturalized thinking in each person. In this way we approach the “Web of Life”, which in the Maya K’iché language is named with the word “K’at”. But if we add to this word the “tz'”, the glottal, it is tzk’at, which means not only “Network of Life”, but also “everything has a relationship of life”. So, for us, the Territorial Community Feminists, there is a principle in the Maya cosmogony that is the plurality of life: nothing is the same in the Web of Life. No two flowers are the same, nor are bodies the same. All of this is a symbolic spiritual representation, and that your eyes and your feelings come from this plurality of internalized life, we love it, because it is a call to deep reflection. We look at the weavings of our peoples: the colors of the weavings are not uniform; we are not the same, so there is plurality in the Web of Life.
In the Mayan language Q’eqchi’ there is a statement “Laa’ in ut laa’t, laa’t ut laa’in”: “You are me, I am you”, and if I do not comply with this principle of cosmogony, I am falling into a relationship of injustice. The relationship of injustice is created if I deny the existence or the vital presence in the Web of Life, if I deny the presence of the trans sisters, if I deny the presence of the heterosexual sisters, because that is their desire, their taste, their pleasure – the emancipated heterosexuals exist – and then welcome the presence of the sisters of plural sexualities that we like to lovingly transit with the affective, felt and erotic energies.
These feelings agree us a lot and we walk in the community feeling the plurality. For this reason, we do not speak so much of sexuality but of the vital plural dimension of life from our cosmogony.
– From this plurality, how do you see the act of healing and how do you ensure that your achievements, your processes, are guaranteed by your decisional autonomy? I think of the confederal movement of the women of Kurdistan, where each one, in a mixed environment, will always have a network of women to support her as a common force.
Lorena: I feel that healing is a personal, political and conscious act, which becomes communal. But one does not heal individually, one does not heal just to be well. We reflect a lot among ourselves, and we respect and embrace the sisters with different paths of self-care. We respect them because they have also been constructed with the needs of a specific context. But for us self-care is politically complex from conscious and political healing. Healing is a very deep, political and conscious dimension, which starts from the personal, and which is not delegitimized in that personal dimension, because healed bodies come together as a healed communal force.
The intimate personal presence is respected and then brought to the communal to sustain and embrace it. The patriarchal mirage of this is to create an individualistic relationship, but personal intimacy and essentialist individualism are two different things. And I am referring to radical forms of solidarity: I do not stand in solidarity with the struggles of Kurdistan on the basis that the planet is one universal home, and for this matter I want to transgress borders just so that all the flags get along with each other.
I believe, on the contrary, that there is a radicality when we feel part of a common struggle, which carries this word, this “You am I and I am You”, because I feel that where there is suffering and pain, there are paths of emancipation, and where there is hegemonic power, there is rebellion. And this will always be in history, it is a founding principle of all transformation.
Chahim: And the rebellions are also plural, they accompany each other and one does not delegitimize the other, in the sense that there is a common rebellion to weave together. What I heard from you about the experience in Rojava revitalizes me, and I feel a rich sigh in knowing that everywhere we are breaking the systems that want to threaten our existence and territoriality. I believe that when we lose the guilt, we take responsibility and fill it with colors and joys, and this makes us understand our rhythms, the rhythms of others, and stop putting an emancipatory scheme unique and valid for all. The farther we are from the comfort of essentialisms, the closer we are to a genuine and profound freedom as part of this fabric. And in this being deeply ourselves, the whole fabric is emancipating as well. Healing must be integral in all our dimensions. It is important to understand what our political creativity is, beyond the inherited, the acquired, perceiving it from my own corporeality, because it is a constant battle.
When Lorena was talking about the accordamiento, this means more than putting your body at your sister’s side. It is about putting your time in moments of emergency, and you have to be there, not out of duty, but out of the awareness of knowing that being there is vital for the sustainability of the fabric that is being woven and to help us all heal. From listening, it is important to generate spaces of trust, and not to let out of the separate spaces what the companions let out among ourselves, because it is an intimate space. And this reminds me that in this intimacy we also have to know how to identify the gaps and knots in the fabric, so that we do not lose strength through a system of oppression or oppressive bodies that speak of historical rivalry between women, while what is historical is the complicity between women. This agreement always carries a mutual responsibility. The complicities between companions, in the plurality of existence, have a reciprocal responsibility. I feel that, even this dialogue that as a bridge you have linked between cultures and peoples from Abya Yala to Kurdistan, was already before with the grandmothers of different peoples, in the reciprocal loving sustainability of the weaving between us.
