According to Guatemalan teacher, writer, and Mayan-Kaqchikel activist Aura Cumes, the West is not the only referent of existence.
“The West has become the only referent of existence due to its construction, whose starting point is the world’s colonization and modernity,” she said.
In this sense, researcher Aura Cumes stressed that the fact that Europe determines itself as universal is false.
“Europe is a more recent world of small geography. There are elder worlds that have inhabited the Earth: China, India, the Arabs, and the Mongols. Europe persecuted Moors, Jews, blacks, and women for at least 800 years. This persecution served to take away their goods so that this Europe could build itself materially superior,” she pointed out.
The Mayan-Kaqchikel activist added: “It is important to think about who colonizes us; to place in a critical sense this modern/colonial world that we often see as the world to aspire to, the world we would like to follow.”
For Aura Cumes, “In the modern/colonial vision, our societies have taught us that, to be educated, to be civil, we have to be urban, not rural. We were told that the rural is part of the primitive, of the irrational”.
He stated that centuries after our first independence, “we continue to be the main reproducers of the sovereign life of the colonizers; although this reproduction is not done willingly, but is done based on capitalist/colonial subjugation.”
The Guatemalan Aura Cumes invited to “open a dialogue with our denied past, of which we are asked to be ashamed. That past has much to teach us about autonomy, freedom, and plurality. It is a fundamental step to overcome the epistemologies of domination.
