Chronicles of Brooklyn-born artist Yasmín Hernández rematriating the land of her ancestors/ Crónicas de una artista nacida en Brooklyn rematriando la tierra de sus ancestres.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
