This is a guest blog post from our student social media ambassador, Lorpu, from Augsburg University. Currently studying abroad on the semester program, “Communication and Media Studies: Migration & Social Change in Mexico”. This is an adaption from an assignment, shared with permission.
On a Sunday in September, we met with a very confident and knowledgeable lady named Fabiola in Amatlán. She has one daughter and a fun fact about herself was that she is a dancer. Fabiola is a cofounder of the group called Women for Women in the town of Amatlán and other surrounding towns. Before she talked about her group and what they do, the first made a prayer asking the guardian to make everyone comfortable and to be able to understand and take away something from what she was going to tell us. That was interesting to hear.
According to Fabiola, Women for Women is an organized group of indigenous women that came together to unite and talk about their stories, struggles and other things that women go through and create a sisterhood. She said that she has also met with indigenous women from Peru, Ecuador, and the United States. Fabiola talked about how for a while she only saw herself as a woman from Tepoxalin, but travelling and being among different group of women made her realized that she was different. Another interesting thing that she said was that she is not married, and not being married made her work a little easier for her, because she doesn’t have an extra obligation to a man apart from being a mom. She also said that some of the women that she works with are not married neither. She also said that being in their group, she recognized that most the of the women had something in common. The thing that they all had a common was that they have all experienced some form of abuse, sexism, and racism. They had different kinds of violence in different ways. She also said that they don’t hate men even though they have experienced some type of violence from men. She said they are not what you would call “modern day” feminist. She said that they support their men and work beside them to stop violence. She said that their goal is to live free of violence and take full control of their lives.