By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez
Nora is a migrant woman from eSwatini, the former kingdom of Swaziland, which was a British protectorate until 1968 for the "legalized" exploitation of minerals, and later became a post-colonial kingdom. She had to flee her homeland after leaving her husband, who humiliated her. Due to the tradition of the Swazi people, once she separated, her family abandoned her to her fate, and she would be unable to remarry if she ever wanted to return to her homeland. Her only option would be to return to her husband and ask for his forgiveness. Nora represents hundreds of thousands of refugees in South Africa fleeing a variety of forms of violence; in her case, it wasn't war or famine, but what they call "domestic violence" here. In our brief but intense conversation, I told her something I learned from the African-American poet and musician Mykki Blanco (Queer black french dance empowerment feat. poetry by Mykki Blanco) about how queer communities live vulnerability with dignity and hope, beginning each day singing: “I am strong because I have no choice, but I am fragile.” Nora cries inconsolably because, in addition to the pain of having lost her baby a few months ago, her sorrow is even deeper because she hasn't been able to bury her in her homeland, as is the custom of the Suasi people. In the middle of our conversation, I share some bread with her, and she sobs in thanks. I tell her to take it on behalf of the people of Mexico, who also know about this and other forms of violence. And I say goodbye with a hug, telling her that something good will come from that open wound in her heart, especially if it opens to the wounds of other women, who for thousands of years have woven networks of mutual care.
A different story in today's world, coming from refugees who, in the shadows of the shadows of the shadows, reinvent their lives.
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During that same visit to the Suasi kingdom, ruled by a king with many wives and numerous children, a custom persisted that left me speechless. Women must serve food by kneeling before their husbands while serving at the table. A middle-aged woman I met during a meal, a spiritual leader in the community that hosted us, told us that sometimes she herself has to play this role when visiting her husband's family, because if she betrayed this custom, it would be perceived as contempt and would exclude her from the family. During our conversation, I noticed that another younger woman remained silent, smiling skeptically, but without saying a word. And then another diner commented that there is a social movement in the Suasi nation seeking to transition to a republic, to overcome these and other customs that denigrate people, but it has suffered repression. At that same table, I perceived three different perspectives on domestic traditions. Perspectives that are also political and spiritual. Everyone survives as best they can, and there are some forms of resistance that persist without changing the age-old patriarchy, while others resist by overcoming fear and dreaming of other "possible worlds." I then think of our America and its resistances of yesterday and today.
The next day, when I presented my talk on collective healing and possible hope in times of catastrophe to a large and diverse audience, I carried the stories I had heard the day before in my mind and heart. But, in order to avoid passing judgment on a reality I don't understand and only grasped in glimpses, I mentioned the importance of listening to those who live in the shadows today to discover their power, moving from being victims to survivors, as a key criterion for collective healing.
The silence I perceived in the audience regarding the public naming of these acts of violence revealed to me a degree of fear, perhaps prudence and ancient wisdom to resist, but creating paths to freedom in secret. The public comments were general. Then, in private, some attendees pointed out to me that the Suasi people know what they face and what they want for their nation. Others came forward at the end to share personal stories of grievance due to sexual discrimination, like micro-stories of vulnerability and resistance.
Some seeds of hope planted in a small kingdom in the far south of Africa.
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After a month-long stay in South Africa and Swaziland, visiting six cities in both countries, I gradually discovered another face of Mother Africa. Many years earlier, I had visited countries in the north of the continent, with a different demographic profile and social challenges more closely linked to religious violence than interethnic violence. A couple of years ago in Kenya, I met for the first time Black Africans with a living memory of the burden of modern slavery created by European colonial metropolises that built wealthy and powerful empires through genocide and cultural plunder, such as that carried out by the Belgian empire in the Congo.
But these subjugated peoples fought to free themselves in the 20th century until they achieved political independence, but not autonomy from the coloniality of power-knowledge-being that the great Peruvian Aníbal Quijano analyzed (Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism and Latin America). Unfortunately, many post-colonial states remain subject, as is the case with the rest of the countries in the Global South, to the economic colonialism of the powers in power in their extractive capitalist form.
Thus, in the far south of the African continent, listening to and conversing with heterogeneous groups of people of various ages, made up of Black, white, and "people of color"—as they call what we in Mexico call mestizos, who are a minority in these lands—I have many stories to continue telling in my travel notes. These are communities that still suffer the scourge of segregation, even after their independence. In South Africa, for example, the communities I visited are aware of the challenge of moving from the process that overthrew apartheid to one day achieving nations of coexistence with an independent and pluralistic state.
Internal migration within the subcontinent today is massive, driven by wars, famine, and social, ideological, and religious repression, not to mention gender-based violence against queer people, whose lives remain criminalized. As Achille Mbembe recalled a few years ago in Cologne (Bodies and Borders) when talking about deglobalizationThe challenge of the Africanization of the world lies, among other factors, in helping the planet's youngest population transition to democratic, just, and egalitarian societies.
In my opinion, one of the long-range challenges that Mother Africa gives us today lies in exploring new ways to unite the spiritual tradition of the ancestors and the wisdom of Ubuntu as proposed by Professor Jacob Mokhutso (Ubuntu is under siege: a reflection on the challenges of South Africa then and now) with the predominant Western world. It is about creating other modernities that make room for a ecology of knowledge, according to Boaventura de Sousa Santos's classic decolonial expression. In the midst of these resistances, new forms of Christianity and Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, ancestral religions and queer spiritualities will emerge, beyond their current ideological avatars that produce the annihilation of the different other, such as the Zionism we discussed earlier.
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Following a similar route, next August the Zapatista communities (Call for the meeting of resistances and rebellions "Some parts of the whole") from Chiapas, in southeastern Mexico, call us together to tell each other stories of rebellion against the crumbling hegemonic world system. But above all, to think together about how to build the pyramid of resistance that has homeland, heart, dignified rage, and the imagination of new katuns or cosmic temporality of the Mayan world.
There I will undoubtedly find a challenging moment to continue “weaving voices for the common home”, as we dreamed of with Pablo Reyna, inspired by the vibrant thought of Gustavo Esteva (Weaving voices). Since then, we began to explore the process of decolonizing the university, thanks to the action promoted in those years by David Fernández at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
And next September, I'll tell you other stories from an intercultural and interreligious meeting to be held in Guadalajara. This time, it was organized by a group of colleagues from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas who are working with collectives in resistance and hope amidst contexts of systemic violence against women, people in forced migration, families of missing persons, and indigenous peoples in defense of Mother Earth. The name of the event, “Re-exists: The Spirit connecting peripheries”, summarizes our way of contributing to sowing seeds and reaping fruits of resistance that have been nourished by a powerful spiritual and political background as spiritualities of the peoples.
As I conclude this series on the South African journey, I once again thank you, Mother Africa, for continuing to give birth to new worlds.
Mexico City, July 19, 2025