TOWARD A REHUMANIZING MOVEMENT

By comunidades organizadas

AFEDES & Movimiento Nacional de Tejedoras Ruchajixik ri qana’ojbäl

DESMI, A.C. de Chiapas, México.

For A Loving Future / Por Un Futuro Amoroso

Movimiento Nacional de Abuelas Comadronas Nim Alaxik

We understand that this colonial, patriarchal, capitalist, racist, extractivist and dominant system needs to dehumanize us in order to treat everything that lives and everything that is as it pleases in order to stay alive. We understand that this system takes over and uses everything to evolve and continually establish its domination, including ideas, practices, models, language and ways of being that emerge from our struggles. We also understand that the word solidarity, born in colonial environments so that some could develop the capacity to tolerate exposure to our ways of survival, has not been articulated by us and that its manifestation has not been determined by our current needs, interests, knowledge and desires. There has been an interest in experiencing feelings of catharsis, belonging, moral salvation, and perhaps even forgiveness.

These are different visions of the world and different ways of relating to Mother Earth, the capitalist system and the governments that facilitate the extraction of everything and the use of laws to facilitate their way. That of the native peoples who have and have a conscience and a close relationship with nature and we seek to take care of it for the good of our peoples and the world, that is why we defend our territories, threatened by large companies putting the life of humanity at risk. That is why today the struggle is for Life. Rehumanization is also born from the cyclical principles of cosmic integrality, since it is the way of seeing, perceiving and living in harmony with everything that surrounds us.

We propose that even beyond reciprocity there is the possibility of a project of re-humanization about their being, about the meaning of their life, about the reasons for their efforts and their work in the world and with its movements (natural cycles). That is to say that we can love each other in such a way that we reconstitute ourselves as beings who emerged from a fullness of life to serve it around. That is to say that we are beings that come from love in order to multiply it. That in this way then we contribute to the natural maximum project of safeguarding all that lives and exists and that sponsors us. Because the world shelters us as beings that depend in a forceful way on all that lives and exists to live. When we march beyond solidarity towards re-humanization a map of our inner human structures and the way we must proceed as part of this world unfolds.

To love mother earth, is the teaching of the native peoples, to see and feel her as a living being, that shelters us and provides us with what we need to live. Let us not destroy it.

Spirituality

At the spiritual level we understand that we are part of everything around us and that our perception determines what we feel, think, discern, what transforms us into thinking/feeling people and what we understand we know. We are not individual fragmented beings, we are beings interconnected with the cosmos. So our development must focus on connecting with that which is human and which we do not know only to discover that everything human we already know. We know suffering, as long as we have felt it. Pain cannot be placed in manufactured hierarchies to establish superiority or inferiority. Pain is pain, and so is suffering. What is perhaps different, and this we do not know, is how long the pain lasts and how frequently and for how long it is felt. So solidarity does not have to do with who does or does not feel pain or suffering. It has to do with who matters.

Which pain and suffering counts? And why are some worthy and not others? On a spiritual level we understand that all pain and suffering is shared. Even if we think that we are not affected by pain and suffering anywhere in the world, the very fact of having to think this has affected us. And by affecting us, we connect to it. And by deciding to harden ourselves and not to give full play to our empathy, we dehumanize ourselves little by little. And as time goes by, our point of reference shrinks and as it shrinks, we become something else, another kind of human being who finds it hard to access love for ourselves.

It is then when solidarity engenders a series of fractures. We begin to compromise it and to delineate its limits. Solidarity itself, whether reciprocal or not, accompanies a process by which it defines and limits itself. This is why solidarity towards those who are reflected the least within the spheres of power is almost non-existent. What is least understood and least identified with is always discarded. So when there is a conditional solidarity through which the one who is in solidarity directs his or her gaze, this solidarity becomes an encounter with a mirror, not an open horizon full of splendor. It connects with what is already perceived and known. The unknown is not perceived, not understood, and not valued.

Solidarity based on reciprocity is not in itself a practice that rehumanizes us. To re-humanize ourselves we need an inner commitment to see what we do not see, to know those we do not know, to allow ourselves to be dazzled in such a way that what we thought we knew disappears before the living light of what is real. And may our discomfort be met by our own determination to keep our gaze on what is really happening without taking shortcuts to what we know and what makes us feel good. And may our gaze also integrate beauty, hope, and possibilities for our species and thus our world.

We propose rehumanization, so that all pain and suffering is understood. For understanding to be sought even if it is uncomfortable. For our eyes to focus on the horizon, not the ground next to our feet. So that in our consciousness emerges human totality, how we belong to it, and how it belongs to us. It is from this awareness that we can set out together towards a collective future to face what this monster that afflicts us has destabilized in nature, within us, by separating us from our living conditions that ensured our survival as parts of the world teeming with life.

Solidarity should not exempt us from our own commitment to what is happening in the world, solidarity is a commitment to the struggles of others.

Furthermore, we consider that we must connect among humans, but above all with the energetic of all that exists, spirituality and equilibrium goes beyond the human and of course, our deep love for life is one of the ways to realize that spirituality. To situate ourselves from eco-dependence and interdependence, interdependence leads us to reflect on the need we have for each other as human beings, this gives better sense to solidarity, as it makes us see that the imperial matrix of thought has placed us in inferiority and has generated structures that operate in this way, giving value to the one who hierarchically placed above: white, man, intellectual, northern, etc., In this sense, solidarity does not become charity, but rather contributing to the strengthening of other subjects and supporting the abolition of obstacles on the road to a full life. This solidarity also invites self-criticism, to question and to renounce certain privileges.

Mentality

By incorporating this spiritual sensitivity, we retrain our way of thinking, feeling, analyzing, articulating, and acting. It is then that we can surrender the myth that we live in an uncertain world and that uncertainty is something new. We have survived immense environmental disruptions in the past without Western science. We have faced plagues, genocides, invasions, wars, dominations by strange beings from other unknown lands and customs alien to ours that have seemed to us, and have been savage, dehumanizing, humiliating and cruel. That is to say that this is not new and that a certain narrative of all this began for some of us in September 1492.

So we begin to incorporate the gaze that is fixed on the fact that we have survived, that we are here and that we have a future to forge together. And that this future is based on the shared and the collectivized not as a reciprocal transaction but as a result of the universalization of love, the re-humanization of our logical and nervous systems.And that by transforming our mentalities that we normalize affection, actions of generosity and proposals that model a focus on the experiences that diminish us to transform us into beings capable of existing in full ways.

And that from the experience of wholeness we understand that in this world there is enough light, water, food, protection, resources and ways of living through which everyone, not only human beings, but everyone can participate in what is life. Then we adopt habits of wholeness through which everything is shared. Absolutely everything. And by sharing everything in complete wholeness, we don't need to control resources, connections, access, information, attention, and love.

That there is everything we need to live another kind of emotional reality. Sharing it among all of humanity.

Emotionality

That from this emotional reality there is no scarcity. And since there is no scarcity, it is not possible to perish neither from hunger, weather, abandonment, isolation, rejection, and poverty. And then our orientation is towards possibility and hope, joy, affection, human warmth, We can surrender to delight. And from there spread those experiences almost like a virus spreads, effortlessly and through the daily actions by which it infects us. Let us infect ourselves with love, tenderness, joy, affection, and human warmth. May we live in a normal way in the delight, the beauty, the colorful textures of the early mornings and sunsets. May the songs of the birds at the beginning and end of each day remind us to take a deep breath and thank life for another day filled with beauty and well-being.

May that emotional life condition then guide our actions so that we live as they say with our hearts in our hands.

Ethics

And with our hearts in our hands, may we forcefully refuse to be part of systems that diminish and destroy us. May our soul guide us to feel all that destroys and builds and then choose to build a world that reflects our rehumanization. And with an ethic based on a lived experience of complete well-being, may we forge systems that safeguard life, our lives as our pain and suffering will matter to them. They will extend their interests to every imperceptible corner of the empire and make sure that they are incorporated into everyone's consciousness, that they are enlightened and filled with significance.

Rehumanization springs from inner transformation to outer expression. And it is then that we look at practice based on applied ethics. And from our ways of seeing, our rehumanization is a process in which solidarity is the first crossroads since perception must be extended so that what is unknown can be discerned so that then there can be a recognition of our existence as human beings who are worth and from whom also human heritages emerge.May our traits trigger loving and humane reactions, not the overwhelming fear that makes them look away in search of certainties and formulas that take away the discomfort that our living conditions cause them.

We know very well that it is difficult to know what to do to be able to link through imperialist illusions. And we also know that there are many of us who wish to connect in a transcendental way beyond those barriers and encasements that these countries have been marking in our collective consciences.

We understand that our realities are transnational and that we already come together in liminal spaces that are not yet publicly perceived. We negotiate each of these internationalist apparati that serve more to reiterate our separation as even they function through what unites us: languages, and being human beings belonging to the same species.

Actions

We propose that what we can do is the following:

Connect through exchanges based on mutual learning. Engage in the sharing of knowledge and sensibilities whereby we can begin to adapt our internal systems to normalize our transnational consciousness and diminish our collective isolation in which lies the power of empire.
Share resources in all forms. These include: money, materials, analytical tools, technologies, emotional and cultural practices, experiences, ways of being to practice developing wholeness-based consciousnesses.
Accompany us as we develop our struggles so that we are not alone as we face this monster that is the same monster you face. This is how we encourage each other, stay focused on the fight and share all the powers available to us to ensure we create a world that vibrates with life. These powers are not only monetary, political or cultural. They are also powers that arise from ancestral wisdom by which we can access energies and ways of knowing and being that continue to nourish us for this struggle for life.
Practice together the ethics, emotionality, mentality and spirituality that will enable us to normalize this collective consciousness that invites us to live in fullness.
Create new re-humanizing machines by re-imagining the role of intermediary organizations and creating re-humanizing organizations that facilitate our transnational integration, participation and strategic leadership at those levels so that we can implement strategies on a global scale to effectively confront this oppressive global system.
Integrate ourselves consciously within its domestic sphere since we are already in it even though we are invisible. This means that we want to be included in your domestic strategies because what happens to us happens to your neighbors, your workers, your laborers, your day laborers, your cleaners, your babysitters, your parishioners, and every other kind of person you depend on to run your imperial lives. We propose that there is no such thing as internationality because in this world today, everything is transnational due to the globalization of this brutal system that diminishes us all.

Your domestic interests must include us and that our interests are also yours. That we also include you from the internationalist mechanisms at our disposal, however inadequate they may be. It is high time that these artificial social structures hardened by institutional policies designed to keep us dominated by isolation and separation are broken down to facilitate the changes we all need.
To use our privileges and our power to contribute to the construction of different ways of life, which are already underway in many parts of the world, to build them according to our ancestral cultures.
We propose to depatriarchalize and decolonize ourselves from what we have learned badly.

The strategies and tools that we propose will be transformed to give rise to other ways of being and being together that we are just beginning to imagine. These national structures that are barely two hundred years old in Latin America should not continue to dominate our imaginations. The globalization of this imperial system has also untied us. Because of this, we are just beginning to imagine these new systems that we must begin to forge. We understand that this empire is already falling and that it is in the interest of all of us to develop new structures that help us forge new human expressions that support us to evolve as we protect our diverse heritages that continue to survive in a genocidal world.

So our tiny collective effort begins to inspire us to invite you to join us as we develop in this way and from there to forge loving, life-giving futures that allow us to incorporate ourselves as human beings into a world that needs us and on which we will never cease to depend. We are the majority of the world that will never go to the Moon, Mars, or any other planet to start over. We are not considered to be immortal or cyborgs. We are people of the corn and the land and do not exist within the imagination of the future of the empire.

Let us forge a future together in which the land, the water, the air, and the corn figure as our great masters of life.

With all our commitment and human warmth, and for a loving future that sustains a dignified life for all,