ESI in Quechua: against racism, from sexual and cultural diversity
“Comprehensive sexuality education has always been narrated from a white perspective,” say the authors of Kachkanchikraqmi. The book emerges from LGBT+ and Indigenous journeys, proposes an intercultural perspective of active anti-racist agency, and seeks to impact classrooms and feminist movements.
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“ It's crazy that there's almost no ESI (Comprehensive Sexual Education) material in Quechua, isn't it? ” Josefina asked Mariana one day while they were preparing their lessons. That question opened up a world for them. It was the height of the pandemic, and the residents of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca were “almost living together,” trying to sustain confinement and life. Josefina Navarro is a Philosophy professor (UBA), a Quechua language activist, and Mariana Labhart is an Anthropology professor (UBA), a specialist in ESI, and a member of LGBTIQ+ groups.
Debates, discussions, and research began in the pedagogical, academic, and activist fields. Thus was born ESI in Quechua , an interdisciplinary collective that produces content and approaches to gender and diversity from an intercultural .
Intersectional and intercultural ESI
“I've always been active in spaces made up solely of Indigenous people or Indigenous women ,” Josefina says. “This is the first time I've left that space. For me, this is also a safe space, permeated by friendship and trust. So I'm not afraid of epistemic extractivism.” That is, the appropriation and reification of knowledge in order to gain symbolic capital within the academic establishment.
Each one contributed from their experience and journey, but at the same time, they allowed themselves to rethink their own beliefs based on the contributions of the other. “I come from the LGBTIQ+ community,” Mariana explains, “and she comes from the indigenous community. But it’s not like she brought all the Quechua and I brought the ESI. What was interesting was what happened after those exchanges. It was an excuse that helped us generate debates, discussions, and agreements.”
The pandemic continued, and the Instagram profile they had created to spread the word about ESI in Quechua was being enriched with more and more teaching resources. They had material to create workshop proposals to impact classrooms. And off they went, to provide training and to be trained, while investigating the theories behind this intersection between ESI and anti-racism . The idea of systematizing that experience in a book came naturally.
This month sees the release of " Kachkanchikraqmi. Comprehensive Sexual Education from an Intercultural and Anti-Racist Perspective ," edited by Milena Caserola. A possible translation of the title, " Kachkanchikraqmi," is "We continue to be, we continue to exist." The premise is that a feminist world cannot fail to be anti-racist.
Also writing there are Noelia Diaz Uyuquipa, a Quechua-speaking social worker (UBA), a specialist in health and ESI; and Lucía Mazzotta, an anthropologist (UBA), feminist, and specialist in ESI.
Urban
ayllu
There is a word in Quechua that means both family and community: ayllu . It relates to relationships of kinship and affection, as well as to sharing a common vision of the earth and nature.
This book grew up in an ayllu . Two Indigenous women, two non-Indigenous women, embodying their actions, bringing into play the concepts of interculturality, with dialogue, listening, and also conflict resolution.
When they asked themselves, "How can we visually convey all these discussions?" the answer came from Paula Franzi, Camila Ramírez, and Bellota . They didn't want to repeat those "sad, illustration-less, and color-less" pieces. They say, "It was important to create high-quality, eye-catching, colorful materials so that the language can reach more people and spread the word" about the anti-racist struggle.
It is an ayllu : all the people who participated live or lived in the City of Buenos Aires or the Buenos Aires suburbs, where it is estimated that a quarter of the country's indigenous population lives but where intercultural educational policies are scarce .
“Do only people of color need to be involved in ending racism? It's like thinking only women need to be involved against sexism. The whole society needs to be committed,” Mariana emphasizes. She explains: “We built it from a place of great love, from the trust of being friends. We were able to disagree, discuss, propose, and exchange ideas, not only in relation to Indigenous identities, but also to our sexual identities .”
Knowledge from everyone, for everyone
The book republishes academic works in accessible language and proposes five teaching sequences for working on ESI. It provides audiovisual resources and a calendar with significant dates. While intended for classroom teaching, the material was also born with the desire to challenge the feminist movement itself . It understands interculturality as a sociopolitical perspective. This edition does not cover topics typically associated with ESI , such as abortion and gender violence, but the summary is surprising: it addresses food sovereignty, memory processes, and territorial struggles, among other topics.
Linguistic racism is particularly prevalent: ignorance of the diversity of languages that inhabit our country generates violent practices and linguistic deficits among racialized people. Schools often force the development of a "perfect speaker" who meets the standards of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and engage in practices that discriminate against and stigmatize other grammatical structures derived from indigenous languages.
" Which knowledge is present and which is absent in the curriculum designs developed by the Ministries of Education ? For example, in History: why not prioritize indigenous struggles of resistance against colonization, indigenous participation in the wars of independence, and the unique history of each people? In Literature, do we teach indigenous authors? What place do we give to Afro-descendant cultural production? In the arts: what aesthetics are prioritized or taught? What music? Do we teach coplas?" These are some of the questions this collective work poses.
What is interculturality?
Interculturality is not merely the coexistence of cultures, nor even the interaction between them . It is a profoundly political concept that analyzes and denounces the power relations that impede equal intercultural relationships. It is a perspective that challenges stereotypes, prejudices, and inequalities with the goal of building more just and inclusive societies. Therefore, it is not about translating content into a native language with a focus solely on the West, or incorporating indigenous themes. The challenge is to mainstream this approach.
"I'm not interested in the idea of interculturality as a way of getting to know other cultures," Josefina acknowledges, "but rather as a broader political project that includes the right to territory from an anti-capitalist perspective . It's not about saying how beautiful these cultures are, but rather understanding that there is a political dispute over world paradigms ."
Telling the Indigenous LGBT
Being a feminist doesn't make you less racist, we say. Just as you can be sexist in perfectly inclusive language, you can also teach ESI and be racist. Sometimes actively and consciously, and often without even realizing it.
Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano said that structural racism has to do with a way of organizing the world. It has unequal valuation of people, which has economic, epistemic, and cultural implications. We can also remember that the American countries were founded on the basis of an indigenous genocide—which remains unrecognized by most societies—where the population was classified along racial lines: white people of European origin were favored, while Indigenous and Afro-Colombians were categorized as inferior.
“Many times, LGBT issues are told from a white perspective, and we choose to tell them from an indigenous perspective,” warns Mariana, referring to the interview with Quillay Mendez , a dancer and coplera, “a cross-dressing queer from the Omaguaca nation.”
“We,” Quillay reaffirms, “ sexual dissidents have always fought alongside women and men. The queers, the transvestites, the lesbians. In some communities, we were placed on the same level as the yatiris, the wise people, who could understand these two energies that emerge in an Andean worldview. I like to say a lot that we are going to cross-dress the qhari-warmi (male/female) as a way of somehow breaking the binary established by the colony and the church .”
Feminist movements have been gaining influence on political agendas, while Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and migrant struggles enjoy less social support and public visibility. There is a wide variety of activism that demands that the anti-racist struggle be foregrounded. And this book is part of that struggle.
With your permission, gentlemen / I will sing in your wheel
Although I am half brown / but I will not stain them
Love is as diverse / As sunsets
A big, open sky / Multi-colored flags
My voice and my feelings / I don't give them to just anyone
May the bodies of all our companions be respected
Fragment of verses by Quillay Méndez
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