Re/braiding Catrachaness: The Testimonios of Subaltern Voices

Abstract

The current literature about rural feminists in Central American countries lacks details about the experiences women like my Grandmother had. The physical and social realities of my Grandmother breathed collective participation, self-reflection, critical thought, and personal development connected to the social struggle. Becoming an engaged social activist gave her a chance to reflect and act, which are the elements for concientización. Once she became emancipated, she was part of the social change by providing others and me the guidance to our freedom. The simple fact that women acted against an oppressive society, and they took control of their own reproductive rights demonstrates the will of women to find a way to make change and create agency. Writing this dissertation is my way of carrying on my Grandmother’s legacy, as well as a means to create a space for rural feminist women from the next generation. My narrative offers everyday life discourses inversely related to those presented by the collective organized feminist movement narratives. In this research, I use testimonio as the method of inquiry and product through which my Grandmother’s and my narrative are braided and re-braided as a symbolic way to construct and deconstruct narratives, terms, and journeys. I completed this process under the lenses of theory in the flesh, Freire’s social emancipatory theory, and Mestiza consciousness. Una conscientización embodies and lives in context, no longer abstracted; therefore it embodies social and biological concepts of physical realities creating a generative resistance. I conclude this study with a reflection on the research process and future direction.