This blog was written with the kind help of Adunola Bello and Ana Moreno Merino, interns at Northumbria University’s Centre for International Development
In November 2022, various creative products produced by participants of RECLAMA were shown in the UK for the first time. Between November 12-22, an exhibition was presented in the Star and Shadow cinema café, Newcastle upon Tyne. On the 16th of November, a film screening was held there as well, showcasing a documentary on spiritual practices, created by Afro-Ecuadorian women involved on the project, followed by a Q&A session with project partner Juana Francis Bone, co-founder of the Mujeres de Asfalto collective, and RECLAMA peer researchers Genesis Castillo and Rosa Tejada.
This event was well attended by an interested audience, and was kicked off by an introduction to RECLAMA and the documentary, which focused on traditional and religious practices exercised by residents of Wimbí, Esmeraldas; especially Afro-Ecuadorian women. Before showing the documentary (which can now be viewed on the RECLAMA website as well), Juana Francis Bone asked the audience to pay particular attention to silences, women’s voices, and the impact of the atmosphere in the communities.
The filming of the documentary took place during the Holy Week, leading up to and including Easter Sunday. As a result, the documentary includes a re-enactment of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The women involved in the documentary explained the importance of the collective activities, and the feelings of joy and sadness during this festive period, stating that it creates a sense of togetherness and unity in the community. According to the Afro-Ecuadorian women, these beliefs and traditions were passed to them from their ancestors and should be handed over and adopted by every succeeding generation after them.
The Afro-Ecuadorian women also affirmed how being attached to their ancestry keeps supporting the community and continuously helps to revive their spiritual memory. In addition, it helps them to form resistance towards extraction of oil palm plantations and gold mining which threaten the livelihoods of local people and result in ecological degradation. According to the Afro-Ecuadorian women, ‘To speak of resistance and spirituality is to recognize the power of collective memory’.
The film screening was followed by a Q&A session, and many in the audience took the chance to ask a question directly to RECLAMA team member Juana Francis Bone, and peer researchers Genesis Castillo and Rosa Tejada. They explained RECLAMA had enabled them to represent and express themselves, and appreciated the fact that the narratives of their heritage and culture were explained and created by them, themselves, rather than by others. This was also commended by one of the audience members, who explained:
“It’s quite impressive that the event was in the native language of the participants, and this helped to avoid so many misinterpretations in knowledge that happens when a language has to be translated into a different one. This is because when it comes to spirituality and cultural heritage, there are certain things that can never be translated and understood outside the context in which they happen. I also like the fact that the people of colour are the ones taking the lead in conversations about people of colour, because in that way, they can get to express their stories the way they want to narrate them. Seeing it in film is better than reading a pdf of listening to a podcast, because there are certain visual aspects of the film that made us appreciate the context more than we could have appreciated it otherwise.”
Peer researcher Genesis Castillo explained:
“[RECLAMA] encourages young generations above all, as we have been forgetting all the knowledge from our ancestors, so we can rescue it - or not rescue it, as that implies that is has been lost, and it has not been lost - but so that we can bring back and promote every single one of our customs, like the sigualdos, or arrullos, which are traditional songs.”
Moreso, the project was applauded by the Ecuadorian women for the avenue it gave them to be proud of their identity both in private and in public. This has been at the heart of the ethno-education initiatives currently being worked upon within Ecuador, something that peer researcher Rosa Tejada has been involved in for a long time. She explained she has been involved in round tables on ethno-education in her province and has had wider conversations to enhance the level of understanding she has about her heritage and culture, and to ensure the continuous passage of these traditions to the next generation:
“We must share this knowledge with our students in the classrooms, to empower them, because we are going to leave this world and we cannot take this knowledge with us. We must share this knowledge with the present generations, prepare them now, so that they can become the spokespeople to future generations.”
Juana Francis, explained the rising crisis in terms of insecurity and violence ongoing in Esmeraldas, which poses a threat to the community’s sense of togetherness and collective memory and is seen as a second pandemic (a pandemic of violence):
“We are facing a really big crisis in Ecuador […] and for us, our collective memory is like a community life jacket, or safety net. Politically, talking about our memories in our community means to maintain a memory of resistance, as it currently looks like the extinction of our territory, for this reason, it is politically essential.”
As a step towards advancement in the future, the importance of orality and bringing to the fore Afro-Ecuadorian women’s narratives and oral culture were emphasized and recognized as helpful in resisting exctractivism and in defending territories. At the end of the Q&A session, Rosa shared a poem and a song with the audience to enthusiastic applause.
After the Q&A session, attendees had the chance to look at the exhibition in the Star and Shadow café and chat with the UK-based RECLAMA team members. Short interviews with attendees revealed that many were fascinated by the cultural heritage of the Afro-Ecuadorian women, and were happy to have learned something new about a different culture which had been unfamiliar with before the event:
“The event was good, it was great to have been able to see the Afro-Ecuadorian women and learn what they have been doing, and to hear from their own words about the Afro-Ecuadorian women because in the academic world there are many representations. I’ve been in Latin America, but I’ve never heard about Afro-Ecuadorian people, so this was new to me. I believe women are seen as the nurturing people, and if women had a stronger voice in the community, violence would decrease. Also, there must be some nice conclusion out of empowering women in these communities, and by doing that, maybe deforestation and mining problems can be stopped.”
Hopefully, this film screening has spurred up a further interest to research and learn more about the Afro-Ecuadorian women, reinforcing one of the primary aims of the RECLAMA project, to reinforce the visibility of marginalized Afro-descendant-black women and create avenues for the transmission of their vibrant cultural heritage. Another attendee explained:
“I think the event was well organized, and I’m glad that there were so many people in the audience, and the event focused on really important matters; intersectionality, gender, decolonising the studying of parts of Ecuador, and it was done in a way that is quite artistic, it’s a combination of the oral and visual history. I have learnt about a different type of spirituality, and it was quite interesting when Rosa explained that this is not just about the Afro-Ecuadorian community, but also the empowering of the rest of the Ecuadorian community. The poem and the song was absolutely amazing. The event has changed my perspective in terms of culture because you don’t see a representation of the Afro-Ecuadorian women neither in music nor movies, and we definitely need to make sure that they are heard and seen, and I am hopeful to see what is next and that this is a starting point of something bigger.”
If you are interested in the creative outputs of the RECLAMA project, many of them are now uploaded to our website. Are you interested in attending a RECLAMA event? Keep an eye on this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook to learn about our public activities in the UK and beyond in 2023!