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MIGRANT WOMEN OF ABYA YALA

Never othered again.

“It is for survival...the other is myself, it is time that the objects of study, the looked at, the exotic can speak for ourselves…” (Lukas Avendaño, Zapoteca, Muxe, non-binary, artist and activist)

Who are we?

We are a collective of three women and one Two Spirit person from Abya Yala, ie, North to South America: Mexico and Chile, and we are living in two different European countries: Germany and England. We represent various identities and intersections in terms of racial identity, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, age, profession and abilities. Often these identities are socially invisible and stigmatised, even criminalised. 

MMAY was formed in response to a call out for papers for a Conference on Identities in Migration, Diaspora and Exile by a university in the North of England. We decided to participate as a panel, even though we had never worked all together and were only linked by a variety of campaigns in which we had participated, separately, in our countries of residence, related to the political situation of our countries of origin and personal histories.

We immediately realised that, despite our different stories of mobility, struggles and personal achievements, the things that united us were the oppressive invisibility we face as refugees, exiles  or migrants; the colonial erasure of our identity as Abya Yalans, or even Latin Americans, in Europe; as well as the lack of solidarity for the struggles in our territories. 

Our complex intersections cause even further marginalisation, not only in Europe but also in our own countries and communities. None of our migration and exile stories are the same, nor are our experiences in our home countries before departure and when we are able to visit. However, we have bonded strongly through sisterhood in activism and similar experiences of generational, ancestral and personal trauma, as well as survival and resistance.

We have experienced the normalisation of different types of violence, both, in our host countries, and our own continent. We consider the presence of violence as a tool of social and economic control, oppression and marginalisation.

On a personal level, the bond created between the members of the group has been very strong since the very first messages and video conference, so we have decided to continue working as a close knit supportive and empowering group with many powerful messages to spread, both, as individuals, and as a collective.  

Being initially rejected by the aforementioned conference, only helped us cement our unity and commitment to take up physical and virtual space in the system, to make ourselves visible and share our stories and specific issues as migrant women of Abya Yala. Our main idea is to reflect around these and other related topics, and to change generalised perceptions, using a multidisciplinary approach and different media and tools to expose them.  Eventually we were able to present for a seminar series in the university.

We work, and plan to keep working, around specific projects and actions for the time being. We understand that the best way to proceed at the moment is to release content just when it is required.

We embark on this mission for ourselves and for the benefit of all the invisible ‘others’  like us. And here we are. Existing and resisting. Never othered again. 

What is Abya Yala? 

Abya Yala,  in the Kuna language, means “land in its full maturity”. The Pueblo Kuna, in so-called Panama, first called for this term to be used  instead of ‘Latin America’  in the 1970’s and they agreed that all Indigenous Peoples from the entire continent should adopt it.

Latin America, and the whole American continent, take their names from colonisation, from the genocide and slavery of Indigenous Peoples and People stolen from Africa. It is a name, and identity, imposed by the European colonists with words like ‘hispanic’, ‘latinX’ or ‘mestizX’,  and erases our people’s right to our own many ancestral cultures, land and existence. 

Therefore, Abya Yala is the correct ethical decolonised term that has been used by the Indigenous Movement to reclaim our territories and identity, and to refer to the American continent from the perspective of the hundreds of Native Peoples still very much alive and fighting back today. We consider this term to be inclusive of Afro Descendants, and other oppressed ethnic groups that were brought to the continent by colonial force.