Ri’ka raibal ixoqi’, Nuestro Territorio Cuerpo-Tierra en Libertad

Documental UNAMG

El territorio cuerpo-tierra de las mujeres, ha sido un territorio que históricamente ha sido expropiado por los sistemas de dominación (el patriarcado ancestral, patriarcado colonial, capitalismo en su fase neoliberal y el racismo en sus variantes colonial y mercantil).

La defensa del territorio está presente desde hace siglos, las mujeres hemos sido expropiadas de todo, desde nuestro cuerpo y el espacio territorial donde vivimos y los únicos accesos son lo que el sistema patriarcal nos otorga.

Los cuerpos de las mujeres no son territorios de conquista, porque nuestros cuerpos tiene toda la potencia política para emanciparse y para reconstruir una relaciones no mercantilizadas con la naturaleza.


Our territory Body-Earth lived in freedom

That’s why we take care of you, 

That’s why we take care of your bones: stone, tree

Your breath: wind

Your eyes: lakes

Your legs: path

That’s why we whisper your name to the hearts just been born

That’s why we shout your name in the gray streets of the assaulted cities.

Lorena Cabnal

A historical relationship, a political relationship, a cosmic relationship and, therefore, a relationship with a feminist view of what bodies imply; living in harmony in that relationship with the elements of the cosmos; then, I believe that this is where we materialize this proposal, this category, which is born from that daily relationship between women and the Earth to propose the defense and recovery of the territory of the body. We do it because this is a territory historically expropriated. We, native women, say doubly expropriated by the native patriarchal forms, but by the Western patriarchal forms as well. But, then, it is also a body that has all the political power to emancipate itself; and by emancipating itself this body also has all the political power to establish a non-commercialized relationship with nature; to establish a harmonious relationship with nature. From there comes the category and the relationship of defense and recovery of the body-Earth territory.

Maya Alvarado

To speak of body-Earth is not to speak of two differentiated concepts, but to speak of human existence within the existence of the cosmos, and the existence of the cosmos in each human being. Our bodies are also nourished by the Earth, but they are also nourished by the resistances that our ancestors inherited to us in order to defend life. Finally, the defense of territory is the defense of life and life with dignity.

Sara Alvarez

I believe that when we talk about Earth-territory, body-territory we are talking about the link we have with Mother Earth, and that in the context in which we live it has been completely lost. How do we recover it?… Where we are standing, where we are living, where we are walking, it is part of our life. Everything that happens to Mother Earth also influences the life and bodies of us human beings, who are alive, and of the animals, and the plants and everything there is. Just as we are treating the Earth by exploiting it, violating it, expropriating it, this is how women’s bodies have historically been treated; violating them, expropriating them, abusing them.