Nimetztemuyuk

Siempre existirá una conexión

Mi madre, Siguanaba 

Oooof it’s been a really long time since I posted here lol And what a hot mess I was when I did, still am though tbh. Well I wanted to share a little bit of family history before I posted two prayers I wrote in Nawat and Spanish dedicated to la Siguanaba and the nawal B’atz/Usumajti. I’ve been trying for years now to learn my family history through conversations with family members that I have access to as a trans woman. From what I’ve been able to gather I can say that I am an Afro-Guanaca. On my mom’s dad’s side our family is frorm Santa Ana, around the areas of Comecayo and Chalchuapa. My papa Pablo, my mom, my tia Betty, and my brother all have afros. We know that his family were wealthy landowning cafetaleros, which is something that is odd considering his families afro-descendance, I do think it came from his mom’s side though. My mama Eva and her family all worked on their cafetal in Comecayo, however her family had lived in Armenia, Sonsonate, El Matazano, Santa Ana and her mom’s family is possibly from Mercedes Umaña, Usulutan. Her ancestry is very confusing. She’s mentioned to me before that her mom spoke another language and that it wasn’t Nawat, she calls it Chapoteco (?) but I can’t find any information about that anywhere. The closest I’ve found to that is Choluteca/Chorotega or Zapoteco but tesu nikmati (I don’t know). She’s told me before that her mom called El Salvador el Wanani or el Guanani, again can’t really find anything about that either and she unfortunately doesn’t know much else about it. Both her and my papa Pablo’s indigenous ancestries are pretty unknown, most words we use in our Spanish though do come from Nawat. We could be Poqomam, Nawat, Lenca or even Ulua considering the only place I’ve ever seen the word Wanani was in an article written about the Miskitu nation as “li-wa’ nani” which was translated to “the evil spirits living under the water”. The only conclusion I can come to is that, including my dad’s familial history which I can talk about in another post, they’re from Cabañas (San Isidro and Sensuntepeque), is that with both families being familias campesinas it’s really really hard to find out about our ancestors without connections to our elders. I only have my mama Eva that I can talk to, all of my other grandparents have already passed on and never really had these conversations with my parents or their siblings, also taking into consideration levels of trauma that prevented them from having these kinds of relationships (La Matanza and the War, gender and class violence). I do have my mama Eva’s sister who I can talk to hopefully some day if my mom wants to let them in on the family secret that I’m trans, and hopefully I can talk with my dad’s dad’s brother someday too. Connecting with ancestors through language is something that is really close to me and important to me when writing, these messages are intended to be taken to them, for them to continously guide me. I hope they may channel that for you as well <3 I also wanna add for anyone that sees this that I’m part of a Trans and NonBinary Nawat language school started by my friend Petrona and our friends and elders from Witzapan called Tamachtiluyan Shuchikisa an ne Nawat, feel free to send me a DM if you’re interested in taking classes!!

Lately I’ve been mulling over undergoing hrt (mtf) and trying to really understand what transitioning means to me. These last few months i’ve been getting really into my own head about transitioning, constantly wrestling with myself on whether or not this is the right choice for me to take. Just this last week though I wore a really cute dress out for the first time and it was one of the most liberating experiences I’ve had up till now in my journey! But I still have my doubts on whether I’m a trans womxn or if I’m okay remaining a nb femme and I cant tell if that’s just me letting my fears and uncertainties loom over me and guide my actions or, in this case, inaction. This song makes all that dysphoric static in my brain ease away like in an unwinding sort of way. To be reminded not only lyrically but musically that I am fluid and how amazing that is yet every time I disembody, that pain that I try to escape continues to roam around to a point of suffocation and lunacy, captures this sort of split consciousness that I experience being siwayul in the diaspora living in the U.S colony. Moses expresses a feeling that I couldnt articulate myself for a while being that when I take Nunantal’s medicine, psilocybin mushrooms or cannabis, the “sovereign suffering” is what would overtake me. However in that very state I fluctuate into euphoria in my connectedness with Ajaw/Umeteut/Tao/Goddex/Diosx. I learned I wasn’t a “self” in the Western sense of individual selfhood so entrenched in colonizing logics, I understood myself as a collectivity of spirits. Those emotions that then flow out of me are a mixed bag of what this body has experienced and what my ancestors and relatives have and continue to experience. So that part where Moses says “God sings to me in reply” and then gently drops us off into some of the most ethereal music i’ve ever experienced feels like being a cosmic spiral of emotions transcending time and space, B’atz the thread of time. Anyways, if you haven’t heard this song before or Moses’ music check out his work, he is amaaaaaaaaazing!!! Yek tayua y’all (Goodnight)!!