Inhabiting pluralities as a decolonisation practice
A conversation with writer, thinker and activist Aura Cumes
Whatever grows, grows from a centre. A beautiful example in nature is the ripples that water creates when something touches it. A centre is not a place where you see everything from, it is not the place that monopolises the narrative of the whole circle. A centre is a space from which we grow, it is our root, not our lifeline.
I have been wanting to know more about decentralisation and decolonization related to feminism through dialogue for a long time. I approached Aura Cumes because of her work in Latin America, and to know more about Western monopolization of narratives around social justice issues. She is loving, humble, and has respect for her own boundaries that is admirable. Cumes is from Guatemala and has dedicated almost her entire life to fighting colonialism, racism and sexism in Latin America.
In Spanish, when she describes her work she says “yo tengo una lucha,” which literally translated means, “I have a fight,” as if it had roots inside of her body. “I have been fighting since I can remember. A personal fight that has a lot to do with my experience of waking up in a society that has the tendency to humiliate and despise all those in this area of the world.”
Different from my previous work here, this piece will mainly showcase Cumes’ words. I choose to have a listening role because this is a perspective I have seldom exposed myself to. I will simply be the thread connecting the conversation.
“No narrative can impose a universal vision of things. This imposition of narratives doesn’t only manifest with the idea of adopting a certain way of naming a struggle, but also means that if you don’t do it you are constantly disciplined to do it.”
“It is not that I don’t like the word feminism, but what is happening is that the West is naming everyone’s struggle. And the struggle against the system that positions women as inferior, was called feminism in the West. But not in the whole world, and why should the struggles of the whole world be named in a Western way?” She has a point, the monopolization of narrative is very present in the feminist movement.
“If I was the one to name my struggle, would it be named like this globally?” She tells me, in a gentle tone, that it is the legacy of colonial rule which has made western narratives universal. “No narrative can impose a universal vision of things. This imposition of narratives doesn’t only manifest with the idea of adopting a certain way of naming a struggle, but also means that if you don’t do it you are constantly disciplined to do it. Otherwise, you don’t exist and your fight is not recognised.” She tells me that for her, the colonial aspect is fundamental to the feminist struggle, though it is not recognised by many.
“What these women were talking about is the result of a feminism that thinks that all our struggles are the same and that we only suffer for patriarchy, not social class or racism. This is universalising of one condition, one experience,” she says.
Aura tells me that indigenous people are often portrayed as savages or needing to be saved in many narratives, “This type of feminism is colonial,” she says, “Their context benefitted from our dispossession, so I simply cannot understand colonialism without patriarchy” or vice versa. She speaks with respect and poise and is keen to mention that she recognises the feminist struggle, but doesn’t want to be obliged to name it that.
Cumes believes that one thing that is fundamental in any liberation movement under an oppressive system is the need for a space for dialogue, but that it is a rarity. “I keep listening to many feminists talk about us without knowing us, and doing so with great authority.” She tells me a recent meeting where a group of women from El Salvador recently mentioned the inexistence of racism, referring to it as an inferiority complex. Cumes is tired of the lack of duality that she has encountered in the language around social justice issues. “What these women were talking about is the result of a feminism that thinks that all our struggles are the same and that we only suffer for patriarchy, not social class or racism. This is universalising of one condition, one experience,” she says.
“Any feminism has to be antiracist, anti-colonial because we are fighting against all types of injustices, and to understand that some women are being silenced by systems other than patriarchy.”
Indigenous cultures have embraced dualities and non-binarism for centuries, it is innate in their dialogue, “I personally do not believe in a struggle that is united, that has a centre, I believe that we need to learn how to habitar lo plural (inhabit the plural)” there is so much poeticism in the idea that we can live in “the plural.”
“By this, I mean that even creations are plural. There are the things that could bring us together when necessary, but for it to be a united struggle no. I think that united struggles tend to cancel those who have other ramifications, they limit the creativity that surfaces during a plural struggle.”
I ask Cumes to expand on the idea of plural societies:
“The reality is we live in a society that is entirely plural, and Europe lives this too. A lot of migrants of different countries live in Europe, and this makes a society that was understood as being a certain type of society, with a prototype, as a plural one,” she tells me. “Truly, plurality is a trait of all time, but the way we treat it is problematic. For example, racism is a way to cancel plurality.”
This points to something I have often explored in my writing, that we must shift from a binary way of thinking to a non-binary one; and this counts for our emotions, our society and our struggles. Binary, or singular, thinking tends to create hierarchies where one is superior to another, this is a fundamental narrative we should all work to shift.“Plurality helps to create forms of living that don’t need to depend on anything else. The plural approaches and adopts everything that helps to live. Inhabiting the plural helps existence, uniqueness.”
“Within the Mayan epistemologies, absolutely everything is part of everything that is named as sacred.” She continues, “They talk about the energy of the grandmother, the grandfather, the animals, the waters, the rivers. That is plurality, this is how plurality is found, something is not discarded but everything is part of existence. We are not a powerful entity that attributes to itself the command over nature, bursting the wind of mother earth, penetrating and capturing the rivers. Therefore we do not have a position of destroying everything that has given us life. This is how we understand plurality.”
“Within the Mayan epistemologies, absolutely everything is part of everything that is named as sacred.”
“Truly, plurality is a trait of all time”
These are the narrative shifts we need in the way we think of the world. “I think that patriarchy is not singular, and for a long time I have doubted how to define patriarchy in indigenous peoples.” She tells me that to understand this she looked at the history of the colonisers. Cumes tells me that she was horrified by what she encountered. She found evidence that in the West there has been a type of genocide towards women for centuries. “ European societies have persecuted the Jews, the Moors, the women, the heretics, that later began to enslave the African population and the persecution against women building torture devices.” (she is referring to the torture devices built during the Inquisition)
“This is the Europe that came to us, and it is a genocidal, femicidal, patriarchy. There is no evidence here that men persecuted women all this time and killed them with this level of cruelty. It is patriarchy that came here with the idea that women are things, merchandise, and the colonial chronicles prove it.”
I think it is a wake-up call for many Western feminists that spend time looking at other populations when searching for systemic injustices with a saviour complex, to read the way that the West is seen from other sides. There is a need to shift the perspective of the circle and realise that there are thousands of women with thousands of experiences that are in this circle. There is no one at the center of the circle, only space for dialogue.
