Weaving Together Healing and Liberation

Special thanks to intern Esther Hewitt for synthesizing these reflections by Grassroots staff members Maryel Cardenas, Jovanna Garcia Soto, and Juan Reardon.

In May of 2024, our team traveled to Guatemala to visit our movement partners, with a focus on learning more about their grassroots feminisms and healing justice work. We heard stories of resistance and active hope and were inspired by the fierce determination of people struggling in community for a better world. 

Learning from history

History tells a story about the exploitation of this beautiful Central American country. Spanish conquest and colonization began in 1524 and were perpetuated, in large part, through violence by the ruling elite and political intervention by powerful neighbors. This history includes a brief ‘Democratic Spring,’ a ten-year period from 1944-1954 that ended with a US-backed coup, partly to protect and further the economic interests of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana). The following thirty-six years saw Guatemala trapped in a brutal civil war between dictatorial regimes and guerrilla groups. During this time, the US-supported authoritarian government carried out a genocide of the Indigenous population of Guatemala, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 people and displacing more than one million more. According to a report by a UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification, 83 percent of those murdered during the genocide were Mayan. In 1996, peace accords were signed, quelling some violence but ultimately facilitating the extraction of Guatemala’s natural resources, particularly through mining. 

A powerful thread of resistance, however, is as much a part of Guatemalan history as the patriarchy, capitalism, and greed that have long sought to define it. As a key part of  this legacy of resistance, Guatemalan social movements are working to dismantle systems of oppression while building a plurinational state where alternatives such as the feminist economy, food sovereignty, and buen vivir are able to thrive.  

The genocide in Guatemala was an attempt to erase Indigenous culture and identity, and an attempt to silence and eliminate people through fear, torture, and mass murder. Traditional weavers, for instance, were forbidden to practice their craft, so the women taught their daughters secretly, using strands of a flexible plant instead of thread. We visited one traditional weaver in her home in Nabaj, who shared the cultural significance of weaving with us. She told us there was a time when her people were not allowed to speak of the past, so they wove their stories into their clothing, hiding meaning in plain sight – a powerful act of refusing to be silenced. Today, weavers in Nabaj are working with our grantee ally, Fundación Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, to promote weaving as an exercise in healing. For some Indigenous communities that have survived genocide, trauma has led to high rates of suicide. Traditional weaving is one way to bridge the past and the present by reminding communities of their interdependence on each other – for hope, for healing, and for survival. 

A critical moment for social movements

Alianza Política Sector de Mujeres, a Grassroots International partner, is an alliance of over 30 grassroots feminist movements and organizations that recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Our brief time in Guatemala with them profoundly contributed to our learning. Women have always been at the receiving end of violence in territorial conflict.   Indigenous feminists have conceptualized territory through a unique lens: the territory of the body, the territory of land, and the territory of history and memories. All of these forms of territory have faced violence in deeply painful ways. Members of Sector de Mujeres emphasized that healing from the effects of generational trauma needs to be at the center of recovery and of organizing for political power. Healing is critical for strengthening the social movements and promoting genuine transformation. 

In January 2024, following months of mass mobilizing by Guatemalan social movements, including Sector de Mujeres and another of our long-term partners, Comité de Unidad Campesina/ Peasant Unity Committee (CUC), Guatemala ushered in in the country’s third democratically elected president. In striking symbolism, the current president is the son of the country’s first democratically elected president, whose successor was removed through the above-mentioned US-backed coup. 

Our partners understand this fragile democratic opening may last for three more years or end in a moment with a coup. Guatemala has suffered the political presence of a kind of mafia-like corporate dictatorship, the so-called ‘pact of the corrupt,’ in which powerful elites control political and economic positions of power. This group is actively fighting to regain control by attempting to sow discord between the new administration and progressives and disrupt unity among the social movements. In June 2024, a lawyer and peasants’ rights activist from one of our long-term partners, Comité de Unidad Campesina/ Peasant Unity Committee (CUC), was assassinated. Given the scars of the past and the fragility of the present, our partners are centering healing and community wellbeing as they seek to strengthen their movements. 

For social movements, including our partners, achieving a plurinational state is a pressing political priority. They are working to achieve this through a constitutional assembly process that ultimately results in a new constitution that enshrines the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Mother Earth, the feminist economy, and the care of life into legal and regulatory frameworks. They describe this process as not only being about a new constitution, but something far more transformative, involving new ways of being, living, and organizing.

Onward in struggle — with healing at the center

We were deeply moved by our partners’ resistance and resilience, their resolve and commitment to continue defending and reproducing their culture, and their determination to work together for a liberated future. So many Guatemalans, particularly women, have experienced, in their histories and their bodies, the damages caused by patriarchy, capitalism, and extraction. Yet they respond with collective care, activism, and solidarity. They expressed deep gratitude for the solidarity they feel from the Grassroots International community and beyond, which they see as critical to their healing and their efforts in defense of territory.