Article translated from the French article by Madeleine
Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil is a Amikuztar linguist, writer, translator, and activist; her voice is increasingly relevant in a country facing its own racism and where indigenous peoples are still discriminated against and dispossessed of their land.
“It is almost impossible to think of the world without these divisions that would have always existed,” she writes in Un Nosotrxs sin Estado. And in the interview she adds: “I tell them not to worry, I do not think we will see it in this lifetime; but why couldn’t we imagine it? There is even a colonization of the imaginary.”
What she imagines is “a diversity of political systems; a confederation of or free alliances between much smaller, self-managed units that do not depend on the State’s well-known monopoly of the legitimate use of violence.” She also stresses that, in this exercise of imagination, it is important not to fall into the temptation of reproducing the model of oppression that indigenous peoples have always resisted: “States administer a colonialist, capitalist, and patriarchal system; why should we reproduce it?”
Towards the end of her essay, Yásnaya presents some concrete proposals for this imaginary world, relating to security, education, health and the administration of justice. In addition, she leaves open a general invitation: to remove more and more functions from the State. This is already happening to some extent in Ayutla and other municipalities in Oaxaca, where community assemblies have co-opted the municipal institution.
But the first major step, Aguilar asserts, would be to declare the existence of autonomous indigenous territories in which the State cannot grant concessions for extractive projects that threaten the health and quality of life of the people. “They kill our languages when our territories are not respected, when they sell and make concessions with our land,” Yásnaya stated in Mixe during her speech at the Chamber of Deputies. “It is the land, the water, the trees that nourish the existence of our languages. How can our language be regenerated when subjected to constant attacks on our territory?”
Her voice is becoming increasingly relevant in a country faced with its own racism and in which indigenous communities are still dispossessed of their land by governments and companies with extractive projects. Yásnaya is heard at conferences and book fairs; in the media and on Twitter, the network that amplifies her reflections @YasnayaEG, her claims, and her stories from Ayutla.
Interview with Yásnaya Aguilar Gil: click here
Source site: https://synusia.cc/ca/llibre/nosotrxs-estado
