“The roles of women within community activities are not in the texts, nor in writing, but in orality”, indicates the poet and researcher.
Juxtlahuaca.— “In the communities, it is the women who transmit the language, the ones who tell the stories when there are meetings, parties, temazcales, they are the ones who teach us from the worldview to communicate with what surrounds us,” she explains to EL UNIVERSAL Ofelia Pineda Ortiz, poet, and researcher from El Jicaral, in the Mixteca.
Pineda describes the conception of nature that women from communities have, as well as their worldview, in their native El Jicaral, located at the foot of the hills between Oaxaca and Guerrero, the last community northeast of Oaxaca, surrounded by coffee plantations, banana plantations, mango and gourd trees.
“I was born in ancient times, there were no books, only paint and skins, only wandering poetry, singing wind songs and flirting with him saying: mánu, mánu, máne, máne, lakua, laku and the wind stopped to listen to the song” , is read in his work I was poetry, awarded at the CaSa 2022 awards, Literary Creation in Tu’un Savi.
The poet explains that in this text she refers to the spirit of the woman who inhabits the space, the territory and who has a language to communicate with nature and the cosmos.
“The roles of women in community activities are not in the texts, nor in writing, but in orality and I write about it,” she says.
From poetry, it exposes the resistance of the women of the Savi nation of El Jicaral, in Coicoyán de las Flores, where they transmit the language, those who tell the stories at parties, meetings or temazcales.
“Women in the community teach about the worldview, not only in language, in stories, but also in gastronomy and everything that has to do with rain,” explains Pineda.
To this he attributes that it is the men who perform the rituals with the rain, while the women feed them. “The role of women in the community is extremely important for the conservation of this indigenous worldview in the communities,” he emphasizes.
Orality, a powerful tool
Pineda Ortiz is a poet and researcher in the Tu’un Savi area of the Technological University of the Mixteca (UTM), where she works on the collection of oral language to recover the history of Ñuu Savi in communities of this region; In addition, she works on projects with the variants of the language, so that the record remains with the authentic versions of history.
“A part of history is preserved orally in the different communities.” The poet herself comments that she has more than 100 writings on the worldview of the peoples of the Mixteca.
“Most of them are going to talk about this vision of the role both in the construction of what is space, time, nature and the spirit of itself. In addition to supernatural beings who lived and contributed to the theme of Ñuu Savi “.
This Wednesday, September 5, the International Day of Indigenous Women is commemorated; Ofelia Pineda says she is proud of her language and what she represents in the Savi nation.
Necessary, open doors.
The writer Pineda Ortiz says that it is necessary to open doors for the new generations of women and men who like letters and points out that the CaSa award she won allows other writers from the Savi nation to open their way.
“I am very grateful for this recognition, I think I am opening a door for all the other people who want to carry out these activities to help preserve our worldview from the letters; history can be preserved from our language.
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“I believe that these spaces were necessary for the communities that speak their mother tongue , I believe that we are also part of that branch of the first people who opened these spaces, for future generations.”
The researcher is now working on three stories from the Tacuate area, an indigenous people recently recognized as such in the state.
