Embodied healing and justice in wounded territories: reflections from feminist and decolonial research-activism in Guatemala

Abstract

Cuerpo-territorio (the body-territory) is a concept used by Indigenous feminist activists from Iximulew (Guatemala) to frame their struggles for justice, an end to gendered violence and against extraction in their territories. This paper draws on this concept to explore the legacy of colonial and conflict-related woundings in Guatemala, particularly sexualised and racialised violence. I focus on the primarily Ladinx, urban, largely middle-class population who work and study at the Centre for Training, Healing and Transpersonal Transformation – Q’anil, Guatemala. By centring my enquiry on the reflections of staff and participants from Guatemala and Latin America, through observations and interviews completed as part of my PhD, research this paper explores how attending to the racialised and sexualised wounds of the cuerpo supports individual and collective healing. I argue that Q’anil’s processes, which focus on interrogating desire, reconnecting with the body and recovering the erotic as creative life force, can contribute to healing our broken relationship with the territorio. I ­situate this work within the turn towards a vitalist politics and ask how we might expand our understanding of justice in territories wounded by conflict and (neo)colonialism beyond legal frameworks to envision justice from the cuerpo-territorio?

Keywords:

• Research-activism
• embodiment
• territories
• decoloniality
• healing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics

Ethical approval for research with human subjects was granted by the NUI Galway Research Ethics Committee in December 2019, reference number 19-Dec-31.

Notes

1 Indio (as in Indian) is a racial slur used across the Latin America to refer to Indigenous peoples. Casaús uses it in her writing interchangeably with Indigenous or Maya and I have decided to leave it in Spanish when quoting her work so as not to reproduce the equivalent slur in English.

2 Kiche word for non-Indigenous people

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Research Council under the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship in Conflict Resolution [GOIPG/2019/4454].

Notes on contributors

Aisling Walsh

Aisling Walsh is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Galway, where she is researching decolonial and feminist practices of healing justice in Guatemala, supported by the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship in Conflict Resolution, Irish Research Council.