Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (A.C.)

Self-managed work poetics: Workshops, Theater and Popular Arts from Community Care

Abstract

This paper is an exercise of speculative imagination that addresses the self-managed poetics of work carried out by the civil association Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (A. C.) confabulated in theater and popular arts, as well as in multiple and diverse workshops. All of them situated in the historicity of the association, the personal, intersubjective and symbolic experiences of its members together with those of other Mayan indigenous women and the politics of place. From here, we propose the Mayan lekil kuxlejal or good living as the engine that animates their care activities in the community, since it is also understood by them as a horizon of struggle that includes the decolonization of work. While the principles and intentions of the association are varied and inseparable, on this occasion, we will take as guidepost its commitment to insertion in employment and urban life, the stimulation and creation of dignified lives for indigenous and peasant women, poor or low-income, who migrated from their communities or towns to the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas for different reasons. For this narration we will confabulate with the play La vida de las Juanas (1998).