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Women of El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru: Recovering and Maintaining Indigenous Worldview Amid Violent Waves of Colonization

Submitted to Program Units
1: Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society Unit
2: Religions in the Latina/o Americas Unit

Felicia Lopez, Other, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

For over 500 years, the women of Latin America have experienced violent patriarchal colonization that have sought to silence them and destroy their traditional beliefs and practices. This session highlights the stories of women who serve(d) as religious and political leaders in El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru. Our panel begins with two papers on El Salvador as Nahua-Pipil women and communities continue to resist and recover from state oppression and ethnocide. These papers explore Nawa-Pipil survivance through the ixpantilia, “speaking new worlds,” and through a consideration of public ceremonies. Our third paper examines the testimonio of Hilaria Supa Huamán of Peru, titled Hilos de mi vida (2002), and her emphasis on yanantin as an ontology of Andean complementary. Our final paper circles back geographically and historically to reclaim Indigenous women (Quetzalpetlatl, Coyolxauhqui, and Xochiquetzal) as religious leaders called “older sisters” within the Nahua and glyphic texts of Central Mexico.

Papers

  • Violent Barton, Independent/Public Humanities Scholar

    Ixpantilia: Así Lo Cuentan Nuestras Abuelas

    Abstract

     Ixpantilia is a Nawat-Pipil epistemology that conveys the idea of manifesting un saber visual (a visual knowledge) safeguarded in the ocular archives of the body. A poetic embodiment in the language, ixpantilia takes place when the living words of the one who tells, “speak new worlds” and “of new worlds” through testimony and is used to name that which is materially absent to create an epistemological presence. Centering ixpantilia, I highlight the testimony of two Nawa-Pipil women from Western El Salvador, who reveal how their community survived ethnocide. Known as La Matanza of 1932 (the slaughter), the women share their knowledges from a place of extreme precarity and vulnerability, in a highly religious and conservative modern/colonial context. I argue that, when seen from the subaltern’s gaze, storytellers re-insert in their testimonies, their ancient systems of knowledges and cosmovision to redefine power and re-claim their existence and relationship in/with the land.

  • Danielle Bermudez, Independent scholar

    Ancestral Ceremony: El Salvador, La Matanza of 1932, and Monseñor Romero

    Abstract

    In January of 1932, the military government of El Salvador systematically killed around 30,000 people, mainly Nahua-Pipil, in the Western region of the country over several weeks in what is called “La Matanza”, or “The Killing/Slaughter.”. As El Salvador reckons with violences past and present, Nahua-Pipil communities, especially women, resist state oppression and call attention to ancestral meanings of justice and dignity for Indigenous communities. I highlight the connections between decades of state-sponsored violence in El Salvador, such as La Matanza of 1932 and the 1980 assassination of Monseñor Romero. I discuss ceremony as an embodied and sacred memory praxis for both liberation theologists and Nahua-Pipil women in honoring ancestors in the aftermath of massacre, and across space and time. This talk details a public commemoration ceremony in Izalco, El Salvador as well as observations from the beatification and canonization of Monseñor Romero from ethnographic fieldwork.

  • Ekta Kandhway,

    Yanantin: Indigenous Framework for Understanding and Combating Coloniality in Contemporary Andean Peru

    Abstract

    In this paper, I analyze Supa Huamán’s Threads of My Life to argue that European colonization and its enduring effects in contemporary Peru contributed to the destabilization of yanantin—the foundation of Andean socio-natural order and a fundamental condition for a good life (allin kawsay). Supa Huamán’s testimonio valorizes traditional Indigenous knowledges and questions the Western logic of separating nature and humans as mutually exclusive categories. Yanantin, as a socio-cultural concept, is tied to Andean cosmovision, which also contests the universality of Euro-centered gendered social organization. I employ María Lugones’s coloniality of gender as a lens to analyze the impact of European colonialism on the Andean communities of Peru through Huamán’s testimonio. Josef Estermann’s pachasofía is also helpful in drawing attention to Supa Huamán’s vision and efforts in creating the possibilities of a Pacha-centric Andean society that defies the Cartesian epistemological and ontological base of the nature-culture divide.

  • Felicia Lopez, Other

    Recovering Quetzalpetlatl, Coyolxauhqui, and Xochiquetzal: Women Priests in Precolonial Central Mexico

    Abstract

    Prior to the Spanish Invasion, women held prestigious positions within Nahua societies (and in Indigenous societies of Central Mexico, more broadly) as spiritual and religious leaders.  Some leaders, known as “older sisters” were vilified with the introduction of Spanish patriarchal readings of Indigenous narratives and culture. In this paper, I explore the importance of “older sisters” such as Quetzalpetlatl, Coyolxauhqui, and Xochiquetzal within the extant glyphic and Nahuatl alphabetic texts. The goal of the paper is to show how the extant Indigenous-authored texts from before and just after the Spanish invasion overturn prevailing dominant perspectives of Indigenous women and return them to their rightful place of prominence as religious leaders. Additionally, I will also discuss how I use comics to pay homage to these women and to the traditional Indigenous writings of Central Mexico while making Indigenous knowledge accessible to diverse contemporary audiences.

Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Podium microphone

Full Papers Available

No
Schedule Info

Saturday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Session Identifier

A23-345