A feminist transformative seminar in MesoAmerica

By Alda Facio

At least 35 feminists from Central America will participate in a Mar de Cambios (Sea Change) seminar to be held in Panamá City from July 5-10, 2009 with the theme “Patriarchal Powers/Feminist Transgressions.”

It is being organized by Just Associates (JASS), The International Feminist University (WWIFUN), Petateras and Wings of the Butterfly among other organizations. CEASPA, a local popular education NGO and the University of Panamá will host the one week seminar in that country.

Petateras help create the final weaving of the Labyrinth show in South Africa (Nov. 2008)

Participants will be mostly a recently created network of feminist activists from the Meso American region (Central America, Panama and Mexico) who have come together under the name Las Petateras (weavers) since 2006 to develop feminist transformative initiatives in their region.  

This first seminar for Mar de Cambios is a collaborative effort and includes using the seven chakras as symbols of our journey into feminist action and theory, where the 35 participants will start with a grounding in our feminist ancestors.  The first grounding will include the building of the "Wall of our Ancestors" by all the participants who will start by sharing a short essay on one ancestor from our country who has been her inspiration in our feminist activism.  By the end of the seminar, it is expected that participants will build a beautiful reminder of their many ancestors and mentors in that wall.

The seminar is inspired by the play, The Labyrinth of the Butterflies produced by the Wings of the Butterfly project. Thus the show will open with the play in Panamá on July 6, 2009 at a city theatre.  The play shows women's invisible and undervalued contributions throughout history.  It features women from many walks of life who have shifted the patriarchal paradigm because they KNOW and NAME life's processes in their interconnections, based on their own historical experiences and expectations.

Throughout the days of the workshop, we will delve more and more into our bodies, minds and spirits in order to become stronger and more efficient choreographers of women’s own liberation and for a just and healthy planet for all. 

The women in the Labyrinth play, as do all feminists within the Meso American region, affirm that we do not want to let ourselves be caught working within the more than 5,000 year old patriarchal paradigm that views nature and of women as commodities to be exchanged among men.

This seminar therefore, has as its goal the creation of a "butterfly effect" which will eventually cause the demise of Patriarchy.  This is so because due to the interconnectedness of everything and the fragility of everything to be influenced by those connections, the smallest action in any one place (for example the seminar in Panama) can have an immense effect somewhere else (the Meso American region and beyond). 

The Petateras are feminist butterflies who have come together with Jass, Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) and other organizations in the region to create what they have called Observatorios de la Transgresión Feminista (Feminist Transformation Watches) in support of women’s transformative political participation and in support of women and feminist organizations who are under attack in different contexts.

At the Panama workshop, participants will come together to strengthen their own wings with feminist epistemology, body work, art, healing, games, physical exercise and spirituality.

A team of feminists - one from each organization promoting the seminar - has designed a highly interactive and integrated program which is to be replicated in the countries and in other regions in the future. Among them are Malena de Montis (JASS and Peateras), Mariela Arce (CEASPA, JASS and Petateras), Ailyn Morera (Wings of the Butterfly), Alejandra Bergeman (JASS and Petateras), Valerie Miller (JASS and Peateras), Patricia Ardon (JASS and Petateras) and myself Alda Facio (IFUN, JASS and Wings of the Butterfly).