Community knowledge and defense of territories: Women’s paths

Abstract

Present-day Guatemala has several challenges for the political society and civil society. The violence exercised, the non-resolution of the social and armed conflict as well as the entry of transnational capital focused on mega-projects has created a convulsed and complex reality. It presents a proposal of analysis focused on the look of ancestral practices that maintain the body and territory, it is essential to locate strategies and ways that people and communities have maintained for centuries to preserve and maintain life. It is important to locate the role of various actors from the Mayan worldview, this involves making ceremonies to thank life, protect the territory, maintain the tradition and rebuild the networks of care. In these works, women have a relevant and fundamental participation. For this reason, it is pertinent to discuss and listen to the testimonies of how they have guarded the territory-body in the present time, to go from their experiences and political proposals to the forms of struggle and approaches, with the intention of safeguarding their thinking “the network of the life”. One of the references in Iximulew-Guatemala, is the Network of Ancestral Healing of Community Feminism, which is constituted by Mayan women, who call themselves community feminists, participating in the processes of emotional and spiritual recovery of indigenous women who defend ancestral territories. Faced with the problems of criminalization and judicialization in their communities, we will present their history and memory gathered in testimonies.