No one moves us from here but Mother Earth. A text of hope in times of extermination.
Written by Lucía Ixchíu
Lucía Ixchíu is a Maya K’iche’ woman from Totonicapán, Guatemala. She is a multifaceted artist, cultural manager, singer, community journalist, architect, community art curator, indigenous storyteller, and film director, and a pioneer in creating work that addresses art and the climate crisis. She has been an activist since the age of 11. Her path intensified after the October 4, 2012 massacre at Alaska Summit, where the Guatemalan army attacked Indigenous people from Totonicapán, a moment that transformed her into a powerful activist and journalist for Indigenous rights. She led the student movement from 2013 to 2017. Today she lives in exile, criminalized by the Guatemalan state as a target of the country’s criminal dictatorship and kleptocratic powers.
How do I begin this text in the middle of genocides and the extermination of hundreds of entire peoples happening right now, how do we call forth hope in the moments when we are at our lowest, when we have felt like we have lost everything, hundreds of griefs and endless pains.
And it is that in uprootedness I have learned that being at the bottom is not a bad thing either, it returns us to the earth, to our origin, it lets us remember that we come from her, that we surrender to her.
Today I don’t want to write about death, about genocide, about destruction, today I want to honor the life of the peoples we come from, where we were born, to recognize the imagination and the future that we have built and continue to build. In a time of extermination and destruction of our mother earth and of ourselves as the human species.
Many of the longings and dreams of our grandmothers have become reality, many of the projections of our ancestors have been reached, when I look at my origin and the history of my family and of the places we come from, I see that we have made our dreams and the dreams of our ancestors real.
We have everything against us, the states, the governments, the economic system, the racism and the ignorance and lack of understanding of our existence, with nature as our only ally, we have managed, through our ways of seeing the world that are part of the imagination and creativity of the universe, to guarantee our existence as peoples until today. With this text I am not denying any of the pain we continue to face to this day, but in the midst of everything, our existence on this planet continues despite all the destruction.
The calling of our peoples is to move toward life, to respect all forms of life on this planet, to remember the past in order to build the future, to know that we have invented nothing, in uprootedness I learned, in the midst of pain, silence, and darkness, that I am a daughter of the earth, that wherever I am I am home, that all the trees and rivers of the entire planet deserve respect. That all water is sacred, not only the water of the places where I was born.
In uprootedness, I began to count the sacred calendar of my ancestors, in the middle of an experience of spiritual abuse, and in the midst of that I found that spirituality is mine and no one else’s, that I am my own altar and my own home.
Eating earth and pressing my forehead to the ground, I opened myself to the wisdom of other women connected to something greater; survivors of genocide taught me, because we are more than just pain, we are more than just violence, we are indigenous imagination, we are every single time we have had to die in order to transcend and continue with life.
We cannot change anything that has happened, we cannot control anything, only our breath, which vibrates with the heartbeat of the earth, because in the midst of everything we are as peoples, the celebration, the dance, and the song have never been missing, because as the wisdom of the Nahua people says, we have to learn the wisdom of the earth, which in return for blows and wounds gives back flowers, fruits, and songs.
They have not been able to erase us from history, we are part of it, we come from it, we invented the zero that has been fundamental to humanity as we know it, and I think the most important thing is that we ourselves know where we come from.
That is the rebirth of our peoples; nothing is greater than us except Mother Earth. We are alive, and we will keep existing, despite everything, on the side of life, in favor of life. This is my last text on uprootedness, and it gives me hope on this day of Indigenous Peoples. I see us as humans, with our light and our shadow, with our contradictions and inconsistencies, living fully in the 21st century.
Today I recognize the value in telling our story, writing, making films, singing, and walking in the midst of everything and despite everything. Today I recognize myself as part of the web of life; no one moves us from here but Mother Earth, and when her cycles decide it is time for a new beginning for life on this planet.
Lucía is the impact producer and one of 76 from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities behind A Day on Earth, a documentary filmed over 24 hours across 27 countries and five continents. As Producer, she has helped shape a film that is 100% community-led cinema, where every frame and every story comes from within the territories themselves.
Explore and meet other storytellers like her at adayon.earth.
Lucía Ixchíu
Maya K’iche’ | Guatemala
Journalist, Indigenous storyteller, and Impact Producer, If Not Us Then Who?
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