In western Guatemala, a community collective is reviving Indigenous concepts of mental health by using sharing circles. Los Romero, a village high up in the mountains, is predominantly home to Mam villages – Indigenous Maya people who have lived there since pre-Columbian times. Isabel Romero, one of the villagers, used to feel trapped inside her home and rarely spoke with other women due to the hard work of running a household with little money. She worried a lot and often had headaches. However, things have changed since the initiation of a community-based collective of women’s circles that has empowered Isabel and other Maya women throughout the region.
Residents of Los Romero grow maize, beans, and squash mainly for subsistence farming or grazing livestock, which is typical for almost 50% of the population in Guatemala, the biggest economy in Central America. However, Indigenous women suffer from discrimination and dispossession. According to the World Bank, they have a life expectancy 13 years lower and a maternal mortality rate two times higher than the national average. The women’s circles, operated by Buena Semilla (Good Seed), have been quietly improving Indigenous women’s lives and helping them find their voices, which have been suppressed through centuries of marginalisation.
Buena Semilla was initiated by the experiences of Maya Mam women when French physician Anne Marie Chomat brought them together for interviews for her doctoral fieldwork in 2010-2012. The enactment of gathering with other women and sharing their experiences had a profound impact on the women and empowered them. Despite the traumatic legacy of Guatemala’s civil war, many women lost relatives and experienced violence firsthand. Dolores Quiejú, the Buena Semilla coordinator in the area, shares that many women participating in the circles lost relatives, and some say they were there when the military started to shoot.
The women’s empowerment initiative made a healing space for women connecting with other women, getting out of their houses and realising that they are not alone. More than 300 women in two municipalities participate every week or two in circles, each comprising roughly 10 to 25 women. The women, who wear traditional embroidered huipil blouses and hand-loomed skirts, arrive on foot via the dirt roads that weave through the villages. The circle opens with a welcome and a prayer, and then the group engages in breathing and movement exercises before discussing the day’s name and energy according to one of the interlocking ancient Mayan calendars. The group then shares their experiences, laughs, cries, and often ends with a group embrace
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