La Colectiva
“Healing me, you heal yourself. Healing yourself, you heal me.” - Mayan saying
For the women of La Colectiva, a path of healing – their land, their people, and themselves – is the foundation of their ongoing work in Guatemala.
“La Colectiva was born as a result of personal experiences, from the participation of women and the importance of breaking with machismo paradigms and structures. It was created as an alternative, for new projects, for new dreams, guided by something more caring, more accurate to reality and to community dynamics.” - La Colectiva, Co-Leader
La Colectiva is a feminist consultancy formed by four Indigenous women, born from challenges they faced within other organizations. As many women within community organizations still encounter an ingrained machismo culture and majority male leadership, La Colectiva seeks to re-empower at the personal and grassroots level.
“With my own experiences lived throughout my life, I believe I have a lot to contribute to help women feel alive, to feel empowered, to leave behind the fear of expressing what they feel. To bring them to our collective so that they too can help other women who are invisible in the processes carried out daily in communities.” - La Colectiva, Co-Leader
With the support of TWP and Q’anil, a Guatemala-based feminist organization, the women of La Colectiva spent the past year participating in a training program to develop their organizational capacity. The program started, though, with looking inward – building the space of self-exploration, safety, and mutual support they hope to bring to others.
“This is a space where we can lead, we can speak, we can be heard. And that is really what we want to bring to our fellow women in other spaces. Our dream is to create a system of central participation of women, where we have the opportunity to share spaces with other women who need moral support, the support of sisterhood, the support of struggle, the support of survival day after day.” - La Colectiva, Co-Leader
Going forward, La Colectiva will support women of community-based organizations throughout the region through network-building, training, and group counseling. This work will be guided by the team’s two central priorities – feminism, and protecting the diversity of life. We thank them for continuing to show us how deeply those commitments are connected.
“Our main objective is to accompany the processes and dreams of other women, especially in the community environment. I know there is a very strong need to support women, because I have lived it. It is important not to be the ones who change the realities, but the ones who accompany them to see other realities, other alternatives, other new horizons.” - La Colectiva, Co-Leader
Soledad Jutzutz Cristal - La Colective, Co-Leader
