Mujeres tejedoras del conocimiento: Mam Maya women curating past and present to weave the future in Guatemala

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the political potentialities the ­women’s collective in the Mam Maya town of Toj Coman Guatemala open when they bring the historical moment of the Spanish invasion into their present work. I ask, which moments in space and time do women in Toj Coman collectively curate to envision a different future for their community? Drawing on collective members’ conversations about textile arts, their construction of a public water tank, and the Spanish invasion, I argue that how these histories are collected and shared unsettles dominant narratives and creates different openings, potentialities, and futures. I draw on insights from 4 months of arts-based collaborative research with the collective between 2018 and 2019 and theorizations of desire, colonial patriarchy, cuerpo-territorio, and refusal by Indigenous and decolonial scholars. I use the word ‘curation’ to signal the creative and selective ways that women draw on their experience and expertise to carefully both show and deny specific representations, knowledges, and memories across contexts.

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