Descubriendo a las Mujeristas
0 (0 Likes / 0 Dislikes)
Being a girl in Honduras, I learned a lot of things while growing up
My parents enrolled me in a catholic school
it was all girls
and it was part of the Opus Dei.
The Opus Dei is a branch of Catholicism with strict rules.
Since it was an all-girls school they taught us to be ladies.
They'd teach us how to sit, talk, and dress
but also how to be working women.
We had a class called Home Economics
where they taught us how to combine clothing items,
how to sew, and some recipes.
My school was big on moral values,
something that I am now very grateful for
about my education.
All in all, many of the things they taught us
was so that we'd grow up to be
people with good manners, kind, and succesful.
What my school was also big on was the fact that we were
girls, ladies, women.
Girls
Ladies
Women.
First and foremost, we were women.
Before being an individual
we were part of a community:
the community of the family in and out of the Church.
In these communities
we had duties to fulfill as God's daughters,
as wives and mothers,
and as women.
Our destiny was to honor God
by honoring our husbands, our work, and our sacrifices.
By being born a woman
we were immediately handed how we were supposed to act
and what we were expected to do.
And what happens if you don't act the way
a "real woman" does?
Does it mean you are not a woman?
And if you are not a woman then
are you a man?
And if you are not a woman and you are not a man
then what are you?
The options are very limited
and the expression of the individual is not well received.
Women for years
have noticed how limited their lives are
living within these norms
and they realize that they are capable of so much more
but that they are expected to give up their dreams
and personal goals
to meet the expectations of being housewives and mothers.
When we moved to the United States
I found a community of women
that had progressive ideals.
When my friend Roxana invited me to an event called
Brown Girl Hour
I discovered the term and movement of the Mujeristas.
A mujerista is a woman who fights against her oppression.
They are women who develop strong moral subjects,
the importance and value of who they are,
what they think and what they do.
For me, the Mujerista theology
is the liberation of the individual
within the latino community
so that we are no longer born
and are told what we have to do
but instead we are appreciated as people
and are guided to become individuals
who are well-educated with moral virtues
and that
in these schools that are segregated
we are not taught "how a lady acts" and "how a gentleman acts"
but instead we are taught
how a well-educated person acts
and how we should treat others.