Definitions

Movimientos: Social Movements

Deslumbrantes: although multiple definitions are available, none of the English translations capture the emotionality of the intended signified. Thus, my decision to keep the word as is and to try to communicate this quality throughout these observations.

Observations

Creating waves of social change focused on creating a future that protects life in these turbulent and uncertain times entails a collective transcendental experience. The social movements that will have to lead these processes must be transcendental. They are movimientos deslumbrantes. They must engage us in such a way that they deconstruct the ways of thinking that keep us intertwined in the project of global destruction in which we find ourselves today. These movements disarm us, break in two the logical artifice of domination and liberate our perceptual capacities and facilitate our connection with time. By connecting with time, we leave the plane in which that system operates and join the rhythm of life of the planet itself to take up our own place within it.

These movements engage our senses and invite us to participate fully in the construction of the future in the present. They help us to generate new narratives that allow us to exercise our full power. And from there we feel, think, act and live accompanied by a feeling of possibility and indomitable hope. They illuminate horizons that we never imagined and towards which we orient ourselves.

From an instrumentalist political point of view, these movements go unnoticed and undervalued. Their humanizing impact and feminine affect lack the value that the colonial gaze gives to practicality, realism and efficiency. Yet these are the movements that drive us and keep us solidly anchored in a transcendental vision consistently faces the colonial death machines. I ask, what more practicality, realism and efficiency than movements that do not give up and that go on for hundreds of years of resistance?

It is then that as philanthropy emulates colonial political thinking that instrumentalizes individuals, families, communities, spiritual and intellectual lineages, and is self-justifying in this, while the future of life itself fades away, these movements do not compromise or weaken. On the contrary, they self-define and solidify themselves and claim the right for a future of complete fulfillment. While the supposed social movements of the North fight for four-day workweeks to take care of themselves, these  movements give their all to forging futures free from the hierarchical and patriarchal capitalist extractivist individualist project and live lives intertwined by values that for the North are theoretical in the realm of social change: love, tenderness, trust, belonging, integrity, and a work ethic that takes responsibility for the well-being of all, of everything.

And it is from this point of human expression that tremendous characteristics emerge that I have been quietly observing throughout my career of almost 40 years. These characteristics are the following:

• Spirituality. These movimientos lie at the edge of human consciousness. They draw from cosmovisions made invisible by the capitalist monster in which we live. They integrate spiritual practices that humanize and transcend the materialistic frameworks that serve as the basis of this colonial system.

• Creation of consciousness and memory. These  movimientos generate opportunities through which people develop their consciousness because of their spiritual connection. I am not talking about simply adopting a political framework. On the contrary, political frameworks are responses that emerge from an analysis. Consciousness has to do with a way of seeing that arises from the subject itself. This subject operates in spheres beyond the political and is multidimensional. The focus of these movements is then on the expression of the subject, not simply its capacity to capture what is transferred from a political point of view. These subjects relate to their own lives and from there they perceive, analyze, respond, and even more important than all this they generate beauty, making new things and defining from creativity their own qualities of life. Memory is generated to create narratives that support the development of consciousness and self-definition. In the case of the Movimiento Nacional de Tejedoras Ruchajixik ri qana'ojbäl and the Movimiento Nacional de Abuelas Comadrones Nim Alaxik, the codification of memory and this process of creating consciousness serve as engines of political activity that gradually undermine the domination of memory, consciousness, aesthetics, knowledge, and methodologies by the colonizing forces that have been established in Guatemala for 500 years. They are movimientos deslumbrantes and drive a constant creative and hope-generating gaze.

• Ethical coherence. Relating to movimientos deslumbrantes also entails observing the ways in which people forge them. The generation of consciousness and memory demands an internal coherence based on practice that guarantees an orientation from the subject that in turn generates a constancy and perceptual stability. This constancy and stability is established through the practice of values and customs that are not negotiated. That is to say that these movements have an internal coherence that they maintain independently of the volatility of the colonial chaos within which they operate and against which they act. They are not completely oriented against colonialism. They orient themselves internally and act strategically against colonialism. Thus they do not become utopian legacies that end up replicating the genocidal patterns that Western culture has multiplied in the world.

• Execution. Due to ethical coherence, these movimientos deslumbrantes execute their mandates with a high degree of transparency. The actualization of collective work plans is impressive because of it.

• Leadership. The leadership processes of these movements are transparent, accessible, relational and intergenerational. There are various levels of leadership development anchored in their strengths and passions and through which they are refined through practical experiential processes involving the use of reflection on practice. There is an interweaving among leaders across experiences, capacities and generations that creates a collective, shared and collaborative leadership heritage that belongs to the movements. These heritages constitute codes or unwritten texts that advance the development of leadership processes that multiply through the creation of internal cultures particular to each movement. For example, in the case of OFRANEH, Miriam Miranda's participation in the collective kitchen as cook fraternizes her and at the same time elevates the role of those who ensure the feeding of the community of Vallecito. By living her life in complete transparency with the movement, she creates through herself a high degree of ethical coherence, and provides a developmental structure that normalizes the way in which she leads collaboratively, creatively and also forcefully. It is from and part of the people. It is then that when one meets members of the movement, they do not find it strange to speak of her as a sister, and with many tales of her extreme human warmth and her transcendental courage that motivates her to confront the Honduran state and the narcos in their daily reality.

• Creativity and imagination. These movements generate ways of seeing, intellectual tools, and practices through creativity and imagination. Since they function on the margins of the colonial apparatus, they draw on other ways of living and give rise to the emergence of new ways of seeing, creating and being. Creativity and imagination are central and fundamental capacities for these movements.

• Aesthetics. In the same way in which these movements have their own ethical coherences, they also enjoy particular aesthetics that distinguish them from their immediate spheres. Aesthetics has to do not only with a specific expression of a way of looking or a certain order, but also with a connection from the most internal to the most external possible expression. And from these movements, aesthetics has to do with the agreement of spiritualities and cosmovisions that privilege the creation of beauty in particular as a materialization of what is sought to build. It is then that aesthetics serves as a kind of signature specifically related to movements.

• Technical ability and adaptability. These movimientos deslumbrantes are sophisticated. They have appreciated the technical capabilities needed to be able to generate funds and maintain legal structures within their fields. The practical and strategic capabilities are developed hand in hand with other transcendental capabilities. They are adaptive orientations that express the practical ways in which communities have been able to survive genocide, slavery, and exploitation. They learn, adapt, function, cope and evolve to preserve themselves and grow. 

• Collaboration across sectors and communities. Movimientos deslumbrantes defend life and have multiple facets. They present themselves as forces of resistance in every arena in which colonialism operates. They are movements that operate across sectors and communities. They are interinstitutional and cut across disciplinary and interdisciplinary analytical frameworks. Thus, for example, the National Movement of Weavers Ruchajixik ri qana'ojbäl is not only about threads and looms but also about the defense of the territory, its reoccupation, indigenous epistemology and methodology, structural change and all the areas of sovereignty and resistance through which the forceful presence of our peoples is established. To say that this movement does not respond to the environmental crisis that humans have created on the planet is a perspective that undervalues and underestimates its sophistication. It is then that the election of the leader of this movement Angelina Aspuac as Governor of the Department of Sacatepéquez is understood as a crucial advance of this movement, not a distraction or a development pertinent only to her individuality. She is a pioneer in a sector that needs to be transformed to protect life and consequently tissue. She has been consistently insulted and attacked in a racist and patriarchal manner, her political  participation has meant an immense increase in risk and violence directed at her. Her treatment must be denounced and unmasked as a racist and genocidal expression that continues to live on in the public life of the Republic of Guatemala. Yet, rooted strongly in her own cultural heritage as a Maya Kaqchikel woman, reaching for equanimity on a daily basis, she consistently models the humanity that the colonial project has tried to completely destroy in her people. It is truly inspiring and moving to observe the ways in which the ethical fiber of the weavers' movement manifests itself in her role as Governor.

• Sustainability through ruptures. These movements survive change, chaos, wars, attacks, infiltration and death. They survive everything that kills. They are generated in the people’s collective subconscious and emerge over the centuries.They have a long view in which individual leaders, though important, are not indispensable.

These movimientos deslumbrantes transcend the present, expand and appear in multiple ways and constitute a permanent front of rebellion and resistance. They generate multiple futures through their varied projects, their responses to real life polemics, and they safeguard life itself. They represent the possibility of an adaptation to this changing and unbalanced world as we remedy what we have unleashed on it. They are futuristic formations that channel the love of life that maximizes human potentialities for collective well-being. We must learn to appreciate them, to support them, to see their glorious manifestation as the miracles they are, as they arise from dispossession, sacrifice, suffering, and a cry that declares the humanity of the dispossessed.