This land has been both my mother and greatest teacher so this anniversary is always a celebration of having returned to her womb. The video below captures my freestyle reflection/ meditation on these seven years...
Seven Years Rematriated
Looking South/ Mirando hacia el sur
...an internationalist liberation struggle shifts our gaze away from the falling empire to the north, turns our sights sideways and south to our greater Caribbean and Latin American family./ una lucha libertaria internacionalista aleja nuestra mirada del imperio estadounidense, reenfocándola hacia nuestra gran familia caribeña y latinoamericana.
Rematriation Revisited: Borikén
Many say we cannot sustain ourselves here, yet many of us are not able to sustain ourselves stateside either. Why aren’t we talking more about this?
Six Years Rematriated
May we release the need to measure ourselves by what we receive externally. May we become self-sufficient galaxies of love and nurturing before being allowed to reintegrate back into our communities for collective decolonizing and healing.
Home: The Hero’s Welcome for the Rematriating Mother
As she arrives a crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter anchor themselves in the sky, pulsing their light above the sunset. This is the hero’s welcome we receive when we uncross the journeys of ancestors.
Decolonial dreams and land claims/ Sueños decoloniales y reclamos de tierras
As a liberation practitioner, making the impossible possible is my profession. I desire a sanctuary on red earth of lush greenery./ Como practicante de la liberación, hacer posible lo imposible es mi profesión. Deseo un santuario en suelo rojo de abundantes arboledas.
More Colonized than the Colony/ Mas colonizadxs que la colonia
She spreads me whole as a quilt beneath the sun like the sands at her shore. I cannot lay down my burdens, neither there nor at the riverside. Though heavy, there within lie the keys to my liberation./
No puedo dejar mi carga ni ahí, ni en las orillas de sus ríos. Aun siendo muy pesada la carga, dentro de ella están las llaves de mi liberación, pues cargo con ella.
Rematriation and Soul Saving/ Rematriación y la salvación de la almas
Politics and colonialism, like borders are man-made constructs. I no longer believe in another’s fantasy of having jurisdiction over me. We die too much, too quickly to let that be.
Rematriation Manifesto- 5 years in Borikén
We the survivors of genocide, who swam through fallopian tubes not yet tied, but soon to be cut. We set out with babies in tow, in search of the violated womb because if we return to her, we can wage reciprocal healing. We wade, swim, swallow salt waters whose currents still mark the road maps of our ancestors taken, our ancestors fleeing.
We flee.
Vulnerability & Bravery/ Vulnerabilidad, y Valentía
Vulnerability in bravery means pushing forward with all your wounds, gripping a shovel tight with bloody hands, digging past the mud to find the spaces and hearts where our ancestral ways thrive, where new liberatory ways are being weaved into existence./
Vulnerabilidad en valentía significa seguir palante con todas las heridas, agarrando la pala, manos ensangrentadas, excavando la tierra para encontrar los espacios y los corazones en donde nuestras tradiciones ancestrales prosperan, donde se tejen nuevas existencias libertas.
Rematriation/ Rematriación
We rematriators aren’t born free. We are born into captivity.
Why else would we need to make the political statement that we are returning to our lands, our ancestral ways?
It is because conquest took us away.
