#wanani

Director Federico Fellini, Cuban singer Wanani (Valeria Ferran), and composter Nino Rota recording the theme song for JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (1965)

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!!

Toto ameweza adi anankujianga kwa ndoto Staki uenda kazi wala staki uende soko Naogopa siku moja utatekwa na ma sonko Nataka kwangu urelax na usitake nyoko nyoko 🔥Photo moto sana but najua haters watadai wee ni poko 🖕🏽 #wanani #ssaru #ssaruwamanyaru #badbitch #queen #bestofthebest #eyaz #eyazmusic (at Ssaru) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCN79n7hEKd/?igshid=2fhn8rhqrdqh