By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez
The spring that nourishes the valley of re-existences is, without a doubt, spirituality or that inner strength that arises from shared vulnerability to resist and re-exist.
When a victim of any kind of violence simply freezes, licking their wounds, they risk becoming trapped in their pain, with little chance of healing the trauma and loss, and without the possibility of grieving. But when they allow themselves to be touched by the wounds of another person or group, they begin to realize that their pain and anger connect them to others. And from there, paradoxically, emerges a power to discover themselves, alongside others, no longer isolated, but capable of confronting the trauma and creating new ways of life that will allow them to exist again.
That is why the Searching Mothers in Mexico represent an ethical, political, and spiritual compass in this uncertain time for the world, helping us keep hope alive. Mutual care emerges here as a way of inhabiting, with others, the cracks in the narratives imposed by the oppressors, whether they be mafiosos or well-meaning people who wield toxic power that stifles life. It is about, day by day, experiencing in solitude the pain that no one can truly feel except in their own flesh, but with hope when one opens oneself to the pain of other people and families, while simultaneously exploring new territories to inhabit with "others," against the grain of the hegemonic narrative, wherever we may find ourselves.
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I discovered this wellspring of spirituality through mutual accompaniment with my Peruvian friend Juan Carlos La Puente more than twenty years ago in Santiago, Chile, during a period of community study with lay people, friars and sisters of the Dominican family, students, and advisors, sharing a roof, food, prayer, and leisure time together. We sought to go beyond the traditional frameworks of spirituality, especially in the case of Christianity and the centuries-old religious orders that had given way to a vertical style of “spiritual authority,” with a certain modern Jesuit influence, leading to the exercise of control over people's lives and consciences. Due to family tradition and as a young friar, I never had that experience, but my friend did, which allowed him to realize that this path was not the one that helped him flow in the life of the Divine Spirit. Juan Carlos longed to explore, like a condor of his land, that flapping that teaches us to "be moved and let ourselves be moved," as he recounts in the book "Mutual accompaniment in the divine Ruah" that we published together, during the Covid19 pandemic, in 2022.
A few years earlier, in 2016, we had the opportunity to drink from the same well in San Juan, Puerto Rico, along with two young Lutheran pastors, Melisa and Ron, who, with the support of David, their bishop in Portland, Oregon, were seeking to connect their Protestant spirituality of "sola fides" or "faith alone saves"—which had borne so much fruit over recent centuries—with the liberation and decolonial theologies emerging in the Global South. Months after that encounter, we met in a cabin in Oregon, the Green State of the United States, a group of about fifteen people, mostly young Lutheran pastors like Tayler, Lauren (now a bishop), Erika, and others, along with Saúl, Héctor, and me—three Mexicans who were then, though unknowingly, walking from our own vulnerability—David, a Lutheran bishop, and a "wounded Catholic," as Juan Carlos already described himself at that time. In Portland, he collaborated with migrant collectives, homeless people, and Latinx artists who, through their aesthetic work, accompanied the paths of dignity for these people and communities in resistance.
Thus, we began exploring a path of “mutual spiritual and theological accompaniment” that, since then, has brought together sixty or more people each year, eager to explore this “alternative” path of embodied and diverse spirituality, often outside the religious institutions that arose from this search but which, over time, became lost in the minutiae of controlling bodies and minds, and “hijacked spirituality,” as Carmenmargarita Sánchez de León likes to say, in the straitjacket of a belief system. We thus discovered the power of decolonial spirituality that emerges on the margins of the hegemonic system. This mutual accompaniment takes place through virtual and in-person meetings: five monthly online sessions, where we begin with personal accounts of our own vulnerability, precisely where we learn to “awaken,” with intuitions of life, dignity, rebellion, and resistance. We read each other's stories to find common threads and differences, which intertwine into a multicolored tapestry that adorns the table in our little house. There, a chef helps us cook together these shared narratives, built with words, symbols, and rituals that each of us creates, sometimes in the intimacy of our own homes, and sometimes together. At the end of each year, we gather for a virtual retreat "in the cloud," where we share with friends from other little houses the beautiful plants and delicious fruits we have sown and harvested "together." To conclude the year, those who are able to meet in person travel to a territory where a fellow member lives with their community of belonging and resistance. There, we celebrate our liberating intuitions, sharing the paths that have led us there, and celebrating in community with symbols and rituals what we see the Ruah (Spirit) moving us to experience.
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This experience of more than a decade of exploration gives us clues in diverse contexts - from the working-class neighborhoods of Arequipa and Nairobi, between lands of resistance in Catalonia and Chiapas, through homes of re-existence in Kerala and Portland, connecting artists with social activists, Lutheran pastors and Roman Catholic laypeople or freethinkers, all seeking inner life beyond religions - where we cultivate mutual support to give each other strength on the exciting path of re-existing amidst the growing violence of this world.
There, the other stream that feeds the valley of resistance and re-existence is born. The Resiste and Re-existe gatherings, which also emerged more than a decade ago at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where I spent twenty years, were inspired by the vision of figures like Gustavo Esteva, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, David Fernández, and Pablo Reyna. This path was illuminated by the proven wisdom of Raúl Zibechi, Rita Segato, Aída Hernández, Lorena Cabnal, Daniela Rea, and so many other "wise" individuals, situated in the cracks of global and local necropower, to tell and think about "other possible worlds | where many worlds fit," as we connect the dreams of the World Social Forum and the Zapatista movement in the mountains and jungles of southeastern Mexico.
But it must be said that the “collective awakening” came, with the force of a tide of life, from the social movements that envision and work, day after day, on the “change of world” that we all long for.
But that's another story that awaits us next week.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, September 6, 2026