Coloniality of Power and Coloniality of Gender: Sentipensar the Struggles of Indigenous Women in Abya Yala from Worlds in Relation

Abstract

In this work I reflect, from the concepts of coloniality of power (Quijano 2007a) and coloniality of gender (Lugones 2008), key elements to sentipensar,2 the struggles of Indigenous women on the continent in defense of life in their territories. It is not new for Indigenous women to mobilize together with their peoples to defend the land-territory-life, but in recent years their participation has become more visible to the extent that the threat to the territories also involves fundamental elements for the reproduction of life that previously had not been of interest to capital. In this context my interest is focused on the ways in which the women of the territories create and resist from other ontologies in defense of life.Thinking the reality of our countries from the coloniality of power and the coloniality of gender implies, among other things, taking as a baseline the existence of structures of domination, exploitation, and extermination that have been reproduced over the last five centuries in Abya Yala, and that have led to the imposition of a world classification that denies the existence of other worlds that inhabit these territories, and that have been persecuted, massacred, made invisible, but that exist and re-exist (Albán 2013).

Embroidering care and reciprocity: contributions to food sovereignty by feminist peasant women from the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico

“…These struggles allow us to understand that what is at stake are not simply resources, but the meanings attributed by indigenous peoples and peasant communities to these (non) common goods (De la Cadena, 2015). Many of these meanings are based on relationships of care and reciprocity with Mother Earth, which makes possible the coexistence in the web of life, identity, good living, and dignity (Cariño Trujillo, 2019).…”