For The Wild - YOALLI RODRIGUEZ on Grief as an Ontological Form of Time ⧸306

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Yoali Rodriguez.

00:00:13.160 How can we imagine other forms of life? And how can we imagine other forms of religion with the land, with the water, with our communities, with our bodies as territories, with care, with solidarity, with love, with tenderness?

00:00:30.000 but also with rage, because rage is also powerful, and with grief, and with sadness.

00:00:36.620 Yoali Rodriguez is an educator, vinyl selector, and writer, born and raised in Mexico, but

00:00:43.900 currently based in the U.S. They are currently an assistant professor in anthropology and sociology

00:00:49.680 and Latin American and Latinx studies at Lake Forest College, Illinois. They are interested

00:00:56.920 subjects of anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist struggles, political ecology, and state violence.

00:01:06.140 Well, Yoali, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to diving deep

00:01:12.420 with you. Thank you so much, Ayanna, for having me, and I'm also looking forward for this beautiful

00:01:17.900 and fluid conversation. Me too. Well, to begin, I want to start by introducing listeners to your

00:01:28.260 study of land specifically. So I'm wondering what brought you to this work and can you give us a

00:01:35.120 glimpse into the importance of grounding critiques of state control and violence within conversations

00:01:43.020 about geographies? Yeah, of course. Well, for me personally, while I was doing my research,

00:01:49.060 I was like, why am I coming back always to the land and to geography and to human, non-human

00:01:54.940 like interactions? And I think it all has its roots in my own family. My grandfather on my

00:02:01.040 mother's side, he was a farmer and he was a farmer who was organizing for the conservation

00:02:07.160 and for the protection of communal land in the northern part of Mexico.

00:02:12.160 So my mom grew up also as a farmer.

00:02:14.760 And so I feel that that connection to the land has always been in my family.

00:02:19.240 They were organizing to, yeah, just to have communal land for people

00:02:23.480 and growing food and growing in nature.

00:02:27.140 So I feel that in the end, you know, those cycles of life,

00:02:30.220 I ended up doing my research about land and this intimate, emotional, affective connection in between land and, in this case, water, because I did my research in Mexico, but in the southeast part of Mexico, in Oaxaca, in the Pacific Coast, in a Black indigenous community, communities around a body of water, lagoons.

00:02:54.360 And when I was doing this, I started realizing once I was having conversations with a lot of local people that when we think of geography, especially racialized geographies where black and indigenous people that have been communities that have been also erased intentionally by settler states such as Mexico,

00:03:16.320 because I think usually we think of settler states as the U.S. and Australia, you know,

00:03:22.400 where these Native American theorists have think about this. But I would also try to think of how

00:03:29.340 Mexico and Latin America has also settler colonial states that also erase and also

00:03:35.920 try to displace racialized communities. And that is the case that I was working in.

00:03:41.200 these Chacahua Lagoons, that's the name of the lagoons, is a body of water that for the past

00:03:47.620 20 years has been basically facing ecological degradation. But this ecological degradation,

00:03:54.360 of course, not only affects the lagoon by itself, that is a body of water that is so beautiful,

00:04:00.480 full of life with mangroves, with so many like non-human species that live there. But also,

00:04:06.440 of course, it is the primary source of living for all the communities around the lagoon. So

00:04:11.540 if you are intentionally not paying attention to this lagoon, even if local communities are 0.99

00:04:18.280 demanding for solutions, then you're also doing another form of annihilation of Black and

00:04:24.980 Indigenous communities, and in this case, of state responsibility of environmental racism against 0.89

00:04:32.100 Black and indigenous communities in the now so-called nation of Mexico.

00:04:39.280 Wow. Thank you for starting us off in that way. Well, this reminds me of your article,

00:04:47.620 Everyday Resistances to Environmental Racism, Mestizo Geographies, and Toxicity in Oaxaca.

00:04:54.760 You write, quote, propose the term mestizo geographies to refer to the Mexican nation 0.95

00:05:01.620 state's material process of slowly erasing and trying to eliminate Black, Indigenous,

00:05:07.800 and non-mestizo people and territories throughout dispossession, displacement,

00:05:13.200 as well as through pollution, terrorism, and toxicity, end quote.

00:05:17.180 so how does the very concept of the nation state enforce politics of displacement and dispossession

00:05:25.860 and how is mexico uniquely positioned as a settler state yeah thank you for that question i think

00:05:34.180 that would be one of the core uh thoughts and ideas of my research and and future book and

00:05:41.020 And basically what I'm trying to say with these mestizo geographies, basically when the Spanish colonial power was in Mexico that was known as New Spain, and then Mexico became finally an independent nation.

00:05:57.740 So when basically the Mexican state was founded as a nation by itself, independence from the colonial power of Spain, there was a continuation of these colonial legacies and colonial powers, even though it was now an independent nation.

00:06:12.300 And part of this construction of the Mexican or Mexico as a nation was trying to build a nation that would unify all these diverse populations of indigenous people, black people, etc., mestizo people, European descent people that were living there, Spaniards that were basically settled there, also the children of them, the descendants.

00:06:39.500 So basically, all this diversity of people were there. So when the nation state was founded by itself, it was this big question of how are we going to unify or homogenize this nation called Mexico.

00:06:52.420 So there were a lot of thinkers, philosophers, one of them, his name is Jose Vasconcelos. He's one of the architects of this ideology of mestizaje, and mestizaje basically means mixture, and mixture of people, of races in his words.

00:07:13.360 however this mixture of mestizaje meant that within time black and indigenous people would 0.92

00:07:22.040 disappear because the ideal was the white population so in the end mestizaje can be

00:07:29.400 think of as a whitening project where through mixing of all these races five races that he was

00:07:36.660 describing in the end black and indigenous would disappear either through acculturation or 0.83

00:07:42.020 integration or also just by elimination so if we think through that then uh mestizo geographies

00:07:49.980 uh what i'm trying to to say with this is that this is only a continuation of colonial legacies

00:07:56.320 where also black and indigenous people up until now 2022 are being constantly dispossessed erased

00:08:02.720 trying to be erased and invisibilized from the nation just as when mexico as a state was founded

00:08:08.860 and I said that it's also a settler colonial state because the settlers also came to Latin

00:08:15.000 America and specifically to Mexico and they stayed and they took over land and that happened also

00:08:21.480 when it became an independent nation like the Mexican government basically said you know like

00:08:28.140 this is the territory from this limit geographical limit to till this limit this is federal property 0.87

00:08:34.720 uh and with this basically ownership of the land by the mexican state you're displacing black and

00:08:42.740 indigenous people you're also uh trying to control sovereignty that uh black and indigenous people

00:08:50.120 have over their land and over their own cultures and this has been only a colonial legacy so

00:08:56.740 the things that we saw in the colonial past obviously it has evolved in different mechanism

00:09:01.900 and strategies but the violence continues racism continues and the other big complex thing about

00:09:10.440 Mexico is that when this ideology of mestizaje was created it was also created in the context

00:09:17.320 of trying to have an anti-imperialist agenda they were trying to compare Latin America and

00:09:25.640 Mexico to the U.S. saying like we're not like the U.S. in the U.S. the Jim Crow law was you know

00:09:32.140 happening segregation was a big thing in the U.S. at the same time so Latin America and specifically

00:09:38.800 Mexico were trying to say like we're not like the U.S. we're not racist like the U.S. so in our case

00:09:45.840 we are not segregating people we are not committing quote-unquote genocide against

00:09:52.740 indigenous people what we're doing is basically mixing all of us and because we're mixing all of

00:09:59.900 us and we will be one big quote-unquote race the cosmic race that's how Jose Vasconcelos was

00:10:08.960 referring to then racism is not possible in Mexico because we will all be mixed so that

00:10:15.380 has been a narrative that up until now people still believe that in Mexico that in Latin America

00:10:21.300 racism doesn't exist because in this myth we are all a mix of all the races and that has created a

00:10:29.680 big problem because people don't like to talk about racism in mexico nowadays a little bit

00:10:37.260 the conversation has been opening but that has been part of these uh complex uh conversation

00:10:44.580 about racism and even further in regards to environment a lot of the environment

00:10:50.680 conversations in Mexico and environmental struggles are mostly around class

00:10:58.200 or just like you know like farmers organizations based on organizations but racism is usually not

00:11:08.240 at the center of the conversation and I think that is urgent because it's not a coincidence

00:11:12.700 that in Latin America and specifically in Mexico,

00:11:15.940 almost all the land that has been dispossessed

00:11:19.840 by transnational projects, mega projects,

00:11:23.060 mining, gas, but also tourism and pollution

00:11:27.620 is in Black and indigenous territories. 1.00

00:11:29.860 That is not a coincidence.

00:11:31.280 And that is part of the environmental racism

00:11:33.520 that has been denied, but yet it exists

00:11:36.840 and we have a proof of it.

00:11:38.200 So just like in the Chacahua Lagoons.

00:11:42.700 Yeah. The framework that you're using recognizes geography outside of state-controlled mapping and narratives. And this really makes me think of the power in recognizing Black geographies.

00:12:00.860 In an article for the African American Intellectual Historical Society, Rami Opperman explains that Black ecology, quote, means Black thinkers, movements, and communities that have refused the ruse that capitalism, the state, heteropatriarchy, and the domination of more than human nature are the means and ends of justice and freedom, end quote.

00:12:26.700 yeah i'm wondering what does it look like to refuse these ruses and how do we best honor

00:12:35.840 the legacies of such resistance now that's an excellent question and that is something that

00:12:41.680 i also been thinking through with the communities uh it is important also to say that i position

00:12:48.340 myself as a mestiza woman in the context of mexico so i'm not black or indigenous so that has been

00:12:55.400 also part of the conversation with them, of the complex conversation about how racism and

00:13:03.720 racialized communities have been constantly dispossessed and how in my personhood as a

00:13:12.160 mestiza woman, I have these conversations with the communities. So I think that politics of refusal

00:13:20.000 is a big thing in the communities in Oaxaca and across Mexico. And this politics of refusal

00:13:26.000 is a refusal of erasure, is a refusal to cede the land to the settler colonial state of Mexico.

00:13:36.860 And this politics of refusal is not only by doing actively and, as you would say,

00:13:43.300 like legible acts of resistance such as protest you know uh the case of the chakawa lagoons

00:13:52.240 have been brought to the inter-american commission of human rights there's also national reports of

00:13:57.900 human rights made by local people so not only legible forms of resistance but i'm also interested

00:14:04.840 in this everyday eligible for some people forms of resistance and refusal and that is for example

00:14:11.700 taking care of the lagoons taking care of the community taking care of the children

00:14:16.380 how is the relationship of the women in the communities with this lagoon that is almost

00:14:24.620 dying in front of their eyes and many of this is uh in regards to grief uh when i was asking people

00:14:32.700 local people in the communities what do they feel because that was very important for me like

00:14:38.380 to think about affect and and feelings how do they feel about a lagoon that is dying in front

00:14:44.560 of their eyes they would uh say you know nostalgia sorrow anger rage so all these uh feelings that

00:14:55.480 in the end describe grief so they were grieving and they are grieving uh the possible loss of

00:15:02.720 their life. So these politics of refusal are not only by, you know, acknowledging that it's an

00:15:10.760 ancestral land of existence of their own people, Black and Indigenous ancestral lands, but also

00:15:18.820 by taking care of their land by, for example, cleaning the lagoons, by going to some canals

00:15:26.060 that are connected to other sources of oxygen by trying to grow again some fish. They say cultivate

00:15:33.800 fish and also regrow mangroves in the lagoons. So I think the politics of refusal to the settler 0.82

00:15:42.140 colonial state are not only in the legible ways, but also in these everyday acts of resistance of

00:15:48.420 defense of life and how more political, what more political it is that basically defending

00:15:55.340 the life of your own community and your land and the water that you live by and i feel that grief

00:16:01.500 and is uh i would say that is a anticipated grief because the lagoon is still alive but it is in

00:16:08.960 very like you know it is in very in great risk of of dying soon and this lagoon is dying because of

00:16:17.600 several government decisions. For example, they created two breakwaters that were connected to

00:16:26.860 the lagoon, supposedly to create a balance in between a canal in between the lagoons and the

00:16:33.680 ocean. Local people said, don't put those breakwaters there because maybe that is going to

00:16:40.960 change the course of the water in a negative way here first we saw our first epistemological

00:16:47.380 violence or violence in regards to knowledge and not recognizing local knowledge as value

00:16:53.540 because these people from the government and companies said like you know we have titles

00:17:00.760 of engineers so we know what we're doing and what happened was basically exactly what local

00:17:07.200 community said like these breakwaters that they built uh basically disconnected permanently the

00:17:12.460 lagoons from the ocean so now the lagoons is an isolated body of water that is not receiving the

00:17:17.740 oxygen that it has to receive there is also a factory of lime oil a transnational factory that

00:17:26.460 is u.s owned that is drawing all the all the waste to the lagoons through canals so that is highly

00:17:34.340 acidic and toxic and also we have pesticides that are being used around the area there's a lot of

00:17:42.180 growing of papayas lime and all these pesticides in the end come to the lagoon so you know there's

00:17:48.480 so many factors but the fact is that the policies of refusal are going not only in main strip ways

00:17:56.160 but also in this reproduction of life by taking care of each other in the community by taking

00:18:02.780 care of the lagoon these little acts of care of love in between human and non-human but this is

00:18:11.920 mainly as I say and I am trying to explore also is fueled by grief because this grief that they

00:18:20.200 feel makes them feel rage make them feel sorrow make them feel nostalgia about how the lagoon

00:18:24.900 used to be and it's very painful to see a lagoon in front of your eyes that smells bad that you

00:18:31.580 cannot touch it even though it's very hot in that area you cannot touch it because you can get you

00:18:36.960 know allergies in your skin so all this kind of sensory body to body water body to another body

00:18:45.840 of water that is human body all this interaction that is sensorial and sensual also is being

00:18:52.300 limited by all these uh institutional violences against racialized black and indigenous geography

00:18:59.280 So this grief that they're feeling, I feel that that is also the fuel to mobilize, not only as I said in mainstream ways, but also in the everyday life of care and love for the community, for the children, but also for the Legons.

00:19:16.900 I want to stay on this topic of grief a little bit more.

00:19:21.000 I was talking to a friend last night and I could tell that he was uncomfortable with ecological grief or rage, sadness, because he felt that it wasn't healthy or, you know, kind of questioning what is that doing for us to have these feelings or be frustrated.

00:19:50.160 or full of anger for those who are making the decisions to destroy our lands, our lagoons,

00:19:57.900 our oceans, et cetera. And I definitely had a pretty strong response that was also compassionate,

00:20:06.620 but I'd love to hear you speak to what you see the necessity of grief being. Why do you think

00:20:14.280 it's important do you have a sense that people are afraid to feel grief and why yeah that is a

00:20:23.940 very intimate topic for me so while I was doing my research I was it was that happened from 2017 to

00:20:33.380 till 2018 so I was for a year in the communities in Oaxaca doing this research when I came back

00:20:41.260 from my research in August 2018 back to Austin to write my dissertation one day I received a call

00:20:49.340 from my mother and she's like you know they found something in my medical tests and I don't want you

00:20:58.980 to worry but yeah there's something that I don't know they're trying to figure it out and I felt

00:21:03.700 something like I was like no this is not good so basically I took a flight back to Mexico because

00:21:09.740 you know intuition so I felt something and I went and unfortunately she was diagnosed with

00:21:17.360 liver cancer in basically advanced stage of cancer so from the day that she was diagnosed

00:21:24.700 till the day she passed away that was like seven weeks she was 59 so that put me in a very very

00:21:33.600 you know it has been a life-changing experience my mother as I said is my connection to land

00:21:38.880 because she comes from farmers and sisters and to like I'm even getting emotional

00:21:44.560 and um so that changed everything for me I enter into a

00:21:54.720 year of grief where I was trying to just survive because the pain was so deep

00:22:03.160 that it was hard for me to think of anything else and I was full of all these emotions that people

00:22:10.500 in the community told me I was full of rage I was full of sorrow I was full of nostalgia

00:22:15.440 and I was full of yeah just this pain pain pain like you know that you feel in every cell of your

00:22:24.120 body and while I was doing all this grief work that now I know that it was necessary I needed

00:22:31.760 a space to slow down we need we live in this you know capitalist system and where we become also

00:22:39.180 very like self-exploitative if we're not exploited by others and I feel that grief gave me the

00:22:45.960 moment and it obligated me to slow down so I feel that grief is basically another ontological

00:22:54.320 form of time when you are grieving you are living in other form of time you don't care about

00:23:01.680 you know these uh very linear timelines i think that while you're in grief is a more fluid

00:23:12.860 cyclical form of time uh where you disconnect from these other modern capitalist notion of time

00:23:22.320 and it's a time for slowing down because your body basically all the energy that is happening

00:23:28.180 in your body is just for survival but also to think about your life for also to think what are

00:23:34.360 you going to do next so uh I share this with uh people in the community I was like you know I'm

00:23:41.360 I'm going through this I needed to stop like also writing and I needed to pause for a second my

00:23:47.680 research because yeah basically I was just trying to survive my own grief and loss and once I felt

00:23:54.680 a little bit uh better that i was able to breathe again and to center myself again and grounding

00:24:00.460 um i felt also mirroring uh the people in the community in this in a different way of course

00:24:07.300 this was my personal grief and that is also a collective grief of grief but uh in the end i

00:24:14.300 felt so many similarities mirroring you know collective grief what it means home my mother

00:24:20.860 meant home for me for them the lagoons mean home um so now then i start theorizing about uh

00:24:31.020 grief as a necessary way of resistance but also i feel that it's also an anti-capitalist

00:24:38.380 strategy because as i said when you are grieving you slow down you go back to a slow life

00:24:44.500 of course you need to take care of the you know the everyday necessities you have to nourish

00:24:50.520 yourself you have to fed yourself you have to work to uh eat to do whatever you need to do to

00:24:57.860 cover the basic needs but in the end I feel that you're living in another form of time that is not

00:25:05.520 the capitalist neoliberal time so I feel that the grief that uh people in the community leave

00:25:13.760 this ecological grief is necessary because it actually is a moment of slowing down slow your

00:25:22.280 life in this very speedy time that almost is like an imposed time where you always have to be

00:25:29.340 spitting and just you know running around go to the next thing your agenda full of things

00:25:35.640 worrying about food about the world like all these systems of oppression heterosis patriarchy

00:25:43.140 all of that but i feel that when you're grieving when you have a time for grief

00:25:49.440 uh is yeah it's just another form of resistance because you are again refusing it's another

00:26:00.100 politics of refusal to an imposed time that doesn't allow us time to feel

00:26:06.860 like i feel that in these smaller times there's not even time to feel you have to you know you

00:26:15.100 get you have a loss in your family you have a loss in your land and it's like okay move on

00:26:22.420 you will have one week and then move on go back to work or go back to your life

00:26:28.180 so i think a politics of refusal an anti-capitalist practice of refusal an

00:26:33.980 anti-colonial form of resistance is in how you have time to slow down and feel and I feel that

00:26:41.460 when you slow down feel this grief that of course it's scary because I feel that we are in general

00:26:47.240 scared of that even though it's going to happen to all of us but we don't have a lot of talks about

00:26:52.540 that it's scary it's painful but I think it's necessary that we start talking more about that

00:26:59.640 especially when it's affecting collective communities that have been historically erased and tried to be displaced.

00:27:16.040 so for me grief is necessary and is also an act of refusal to slow down to go against us

00:27:28.620 fast life and yeah just create another cyclical form of time where you have time to feel

00:27:36.580 And what is more, you know, more resisting that in these times, just feel, feel and feel and cry and feel rage and feel nostalgia.

00:27:51.700 And I feel that that can be a fuel because once you have all these feelings and you're feeling them, as the communities are doing, then it's the time to act.

00:28:01.700 because as i said in their case the lagoon is not completely there so there's still hope

00:28:08.700 so there's this connection in between grief and hope because while the lagoon is still dying it

00:28:16.720 is still alive so you're having all these emotions of grief of sorrow nostalgia rage

00:28:21.920 all these things that are you know bombarding your your body and you slow down and you're

00:28:26.660 feeling them and you are trying to understand what is happening but at the same time you know

00:28:31.260 that you want to make the lagoon or the body of water or the land to survive to live again

00:28:36.700 so you embrace that hope and you're like okay I'm gonna try to do something to stop this ecocide

00:28:42.620 to stop this uh environmental racism that is happening to the community so that grief and

00:28:49.280 that act of refusal of no I'm gonna just deny what I'm feeling and I'm just gonna keep going

00:28:55.060 i feel that stopping feeling the sorrow the grief and what when i say stopping i don't mean that they

00:29:01.960 stop like fishing or that they stop doing their everyday life they need it but what i say is that

00:29:06.980 they actually actively are uh in tune with their emotions and it's slowing down to think and feel

00:29:13.200 what they're feeling in relationship to a non-human body when you have that time then you

00:29:18.600 can think okay what are we gonna do about this so there is a direct connection uh in between grief

00:29:26.240 and hope and I think that uh even for me as after my mom passed away and it was deeply painful

00:29:34.040 after all my grief and now that I permitted myself uh to have the time to slow down and have a more

00:29:42.080 slow life and grief uh after that i had hope because i was like okay what can i do in honoring

00:29:50.080 my ancestor now and my ancestors like what do i need to do what do i need to do in regards to my

00:29:56.120 work how can i connect my own work and my own experience and my own ancestors and connection

00:30:01.980 with land with these communities so that gave me another sense of life another sense of

00:30:08.060 existence in this world

00:30:10.220 but also another sense of hope

00:30:12.100 for the future.

00:30:12.960 Do you agree

00:30:16.460 that every day

00:30:19.960 slips into night

00:30:22.900 every word is a lie

00:30:26.760 a movement of lips

00:30:33.320 gone as fast

00:30:35.960 I stay as a kiss

00:30:38.760 From a lover of just one night

00:30:42.700 Everyone I love will die

00:30:47.620 I am lonely

00:30:58.580 A moment to a mountain

00:31:04.020 A droplet to the sea

00:31:08.480 And the ancient seas live in me

00:31:13.420 I know the river

00:31:17.720 She's a friend of mine

00:31:23.520 Sparse and serpentine

00:31:26.900 She lives her freedom and I live mine

00:31:32.020 Can she always be that kind?

00:31:38.040 Can she always be that kind?

00:31:51.740 Thank you so much for sharing such personal bits of your life with us.

00:31:59.040 I really felt your words and I could imagine a lot of folks listening will tune into their own

00:32:10.440 grief and hopefully let go with us a bit in this moment and yeah there's so much in your response

00:32:22.700 And I want to take a moment to recognize how do both land and humanity and relationship engage in practices of fugitivity and resistance?

00:32:36.180 yeah um i feel that as you said like when we and that is something that i've been thinking too

00:32:48.840 that uh there's a lot of work about ecological grief but also i feel that sometimes um

00:32:56.840 it doesn't uh engage a lot with uh you know sometimes it is like this isolated like land

00:33:04.740 uh without actually saying uh what are the intersections in between this grief like

00:33:12.420 basically who is uh causing uh these ecological damage and i think it's important that when we

00:33:19.800 have an intersectional analysis of who is also being oppressed we have also an intersectional

00:33:25.840 analysis of who is doing it and those have names those have uh you know qualities in the case of

00:33:33.560 Mexico obviously is the Mexican state also is uh transnational companies so I think that

00:33:40.180 that is important to to analyze and I think that uh these fugitivity uh I mean first of all these

00:33:49.740 black uh communities that are in the coast they were literally fugitives from slavery in Mexico 0.97

00:33:57.280 so they went to the coast to uh you know they were maroon communities

00:34:03.080 that were escaping from slavery in Mexico and indigenous communities were also

00:34:10.220 trying to escape from colonial power so we have one first you know sense of fugitivity

00:34:20.340 if we connect that to what is happening now I think that fugitivity is not only in terms of

00:34:28.560 fugitivity of the Mexican state geography as they want to create it to a limited space but 0.98

00:34:36.380 a fugitivity of how black and indigenous geographies are fugitive they're trying not to be 0.93

00:34:43.880 contained they're trying not to be owned they're trying not to be capitalized and all those things

00:34:51.140 are fugitive to a settler colonial state such as Mexico. Another thing of fugitivity is I think

00:34:59.400 when we, again, when we have the time to feel, when we connect our body with our land or what

00:35:08.140 Lorena Karnal from Guatemala says, cuerpo territorio, body territory, meaning these

00:35:13.700 intimate connections when we have the time to feel grief love care sorrow in regards to the

00:35:22.920 land but also to ourselves and our communities i feel that that's another sense of fugitivity

00:35:28.380 because you are also being fugitive from these uh uh modern impositions of only uh thinking and

00:35:38.560 or centering the the rational of the human the reason the rational and i think that when you

00:35:46.580 connect to spiritual life to feelings to affect you are also being a fugitive of these uh capitalist

00:35:56.260 colonial impositions when you are uh being fugitive also i mean there's a lot of uh

00:36:04.320 trans non-binary people in these communities so when you're also me myself I identify as

00:36:12.120 a non-binary person so when you are also uh embodying uh you know a not cisgender person

00:36:23.000 I feel that you're also being fugitive of all these colonial impositions so I feel that there's

00:36:29.220 so much so much to be that you see as politics of refusal and fugitivity and this fugitivity

00:36:37.400 is part of the resistance but I feel that at the center of it is that we have to have time to feel

00:36:42.660 and to connect to the spirit in however form we think of it or we feel a bit or we sense of it

00:36:51.120 but I feel that is necessary more than ever in these times

00:36:55.940 Yes. In your article, Dying Lagoons Reveal Mexico's Environmental Racism, written with Jason Maurice Porter, you explain, quote,

00:37:09.980 In 1938, the Chakawa Pastoria Lagoons were declared as a national park, a federally protected area by former President Lazaro Cardenay.

00:37:23.200 However, this protection has been exclusively symbolic given the current polluted conditions of the lagoons.

00:37:31.640 When conservation and protection of natural areas in the country entail federal property regulations, Black and Indigenous communities are left without legal ownership over the land and consequentially limited in their abilities to practice traditional relationships to land, end quote.

00:37:50.560 and I'm wondering in what ways should we remain vigilant against certain narratives of quote

00:37:59.300 preservation and how do cases like these show the insidious state power over both human and

00:38:07.120 more than human life yeah I'm glad that you asked that question yeah so I think that

00:38:12.920 national parks, in many cases, but also in the case of Mexico, they are a huge paradox because

00:38:22.460 as you read, the National Park of the Chacahua Lagoons was created in 1938. It was supposedly

00:38:29.600 to preserve and to be a protected federal area of natural conservation, quote-unquote.

00:38:36.160 but what i feel is uh the paradox is that you have this uh you know mainstream discourse of

00:38:47.280 conservation natural conservation natural preservation but almost all these discourses

00:38:54.580 erase the communities local communities that live there so is this almost like colonial tropical

00:39:01.840 fantasy of pristine nature and wilderness and I think that is very dangerous because you're

00:39:09.260 doing another erasure and annihilation of of the local people that live there because you're

00:39:16.300 basically again doing a colonial binary of nature and humans and so in all these conservation

00:39:25.120 policies that happen in Mexico all these national parks first of all they become federal ownership 0.98

00:39:31.460 so that means that the state is the owner of these lands so that means that all black indigenous 0.97

00:39:38.300 and mestizo populations that live around the chakawa lagoons they don't have basically legal 0.94

00:39:45.020 rights over the land they don't have titling they don't have you know so basically they're 0.99

00:39:52.140 living inside a quote-unquote federal property so you are imposing with this law or these

00:40:01.220 declaration of as a national park you're not only uh basically taking the ownership

00:40:07.820 or uh basically dispossessing people from their ancestral land but you're also imposing rules

00:40:14.940 because with the national park uh for quote-unquote conservation there's also a lot of rules in

00:40:20.760 regards to how they use the water how they use the lagoons how much they can fish what plants

00:40:25.780 what animals and i i mean these uh communities have an ancestral spiritual

00:40:33.240 physical emotional connection to the lagoons uh especially black and indigenous peoples that have

00:40:42.240 traditions of food cooking certain food cooking certain fishes cooking uh using you know some

00:40:49.540 mangrove so basically again with this natural conservation discourses one you exclude the

00:40:59.860 local population like if they don't exist and two you criminalize the local people black and

00:41:07.960 indigenous mestizo population that live there uh and you basically they become uh again bodies that

00:41:15.020 are policed racialized bodies that are policed by the state and that is a big big even another

00:41:21.960 paradox is that you have this policing of the bodies and communities that live there that have

00:41:28.300 lived there for centuries but at the same time the chakawa lagoons have uh become a very uh you know

00:41:37.060 touristy spot especially people coming from the global north especially white people but also

00:41:45.540 national people usually from the cities mestizo and white mexicans coming from the cities from 0.88

00:41:54.580 yeah upper middle class so while you're criminalizing and policing black and indigenous

00:42:00.640 people in their own territory and you are denying access to their own ownership and

00:42:06.220 sovereignty over their own lands you're also allowing international and national tourism to

00:42:13.300 come here and quote unquote again and I say this in a very ironic way because the state uses this

00:42:20.640 discourse of you know come to this natural paradise in the pacific ocean and come and be

00:42:27.880 close to the nature so they're selling nature as a commodity as an exotic tropical fantasy that

00:42:35.100 again is colonial so basically this national park of the chakawa lagoons become a commodity

00:42:42.360 for outsiders and meanwhile there's an ecocide and violence happening in the everyday life for

00:42:51.000 black and indigenous communities that live there and they're they're being policed and that they're

00:42:57.060 living environmental racism and that they're seeing how fish is dying there has been a massive

00:43:02.360 uh fish dead uh there was an earthquake in 2017 of 7.1 scale victor so it was a really big

00:43:10.400 earthquake and a couple of days after the earthquake uh approximately 40 tons of fish

00:43:17.980 was was found there floating in the lagoons so we're not talking about a little you know

00:43:23.980 ecocide like this is happening in massive ways uh the local community was the one who was in

00:43:30.500 charge of cleaning the lagoons i mean they did all by themselves and uh the government the only

00:43:37.840 thing that they did was send like a bus to put all the fish that was dead and but that's it

00:43:45.240 so you have this discourse of conservation of uh you know natural protection federal area

00:43:55.040 national park but it's only for the profit of the elites in mexico for the elites from the global

00:44:04.520 north meanwhile the local people are suffering uh environmental racism ecocide grief and all

00:44:14.520 the consequences of this ecological degradation so i think that yeah we have as you said ajana

00:44:19.740 we have to be very careful with these uh discourses of conservation and national parks

00:44:24.700 Because I think that national parks can be also seen as very, a colonial name for another form of dispossession from states, settler colonial states, to Native American indigenous communities, Black communities, in the sense that they appear as pristine nature without humans. 0.67

00:44:46.000 So again, they disappear. The connections and these human and non-human everyday interaction disappear in these names of conservation. 0.54

00:44:55.920 And then because of conservation, it is justified the criminalization and the policing of these communities.

00:45:16.000 Sous-titrage ST' 501

00:45:46.000 Yeah, it's reminding me of this term, slow violence, and how environmental destruction

00:46:05.880 and social injustices can be really invisibilized and even naturalized.

00:46:13.420 you know i'm thinking through the deep connection and observation of land over time that it takes

00:46:19.760 to notice things like this like what you're speaking to so i'd love if you could maybe walk

00:46:25.440 us through how this slow violence can keep us stagnant or keep us from standing up because

00:46:37.780 we don't always see it so clearly in real time yeah I love that you uh used uh slow violence by

00:46:48.380 Robert Nixon because that's something that work and also slow death by uh Laura I forgot her

00:46:57.840 her last name I will remember in a second but slow violence by Robert Nixon I think it that

00:47:04.180 is exactly what is happening here and i think that uh because this ecocide has been happening

00:47:11.140 i mean a long 20 years uh people are you know they don't take into they don't see it especially

00:47:21.880 as outsiders they go surfers go they have you know their time in these uh imagined um commodified

00:47:31.920 body of water for this connection from you know even these these other binaries of civilization

00:47:40.660 all these things that are deeply problematic but i think that against that slow violence

00:47:49.400 is what i'm talking about the the power of slowed life while you grieve and i think that when you

00:47:58.760 counter you know try to counter uh i don't know do a counter geography of slow life

00:48:07.480 and i and again when i say slow life i mean having time to feel to think while you're doing things

00:48:16.220 like you don't have to actually stop because i know a lot of people have actually especially

00:48:20.540 in these communities they have to work but you can be walking and also feeling you can be fishing 1.00

00:48:28.140 and also feeling a lot of the women would tell me that when they're in the lagoons, that's the

00:48:32.140 moment while they're fishing, that's the moment where they connect to their ancestors, where they

00:48:36.980 feel peace, where they feel nostalgia, where they feel grief, where they feel the connection to

00:48:43.120 their ancestral, you know, people that live in those lands. So I feel that it is in these everyday

00:48:53.580 forms of violence that we have to put attention i think that another term that could be here

00:49:01.860 tied to with necropolitics by member because he talks also about how necropolitics usually don't

00:49:08.460 happen uh you know it can happen in uh specific moments of uh politics of that of targeting a

00:49:18.240 population but it also can happen in across time in a progressive time so i think that

00:49:25.620 these forms of violence that is slow violence and in this case the echo side uh we have to pay

00:49:31.980 attention to the everyday forms of denying life to certain populations to denying the existence

00:49:38.740 but also i think that we don't only have to stay there and that's why i think grief feeling is the

00:49:46.780 you know the counter resistance to what i call a slow life like if you are living a slow life

00:49:54.860 where you are permitting to feel to think to to connect to the spiritual self to take care of

00:50:03.520 your community of the land of the water you're also going against this slow violence that is

00:50:09.360 happening but i think that we need community of course and we need to basically uh uh you know

00:50:18.720 the other day i was uh listening to angela davis in an interview and she was saying that hope is

00:50:24.280 a discipline and that we have to have a discipline for hope and i think that we have to basically

00:50:31.160 embrace hope in in these times and I think that against yeah against slow violence

00:50:37.720 we had to also embrace hope and slow life

00:50:43.240 yeah I think hope is such a hard feeling to come by yeah these times and I'm happy that you're

00:50:56.100 speaking to it because I think we need to be reminded that another way is possible and that

00:51:09.080 other way needs us to be slow. We can't achieve different outcomes by capitalistic or colonial

00:51:21.360 ways of being. And I think so much of what hope has become, at least in the environmental

00:51:31.380 world is about techno solutions or green energy, something really economic or some type of

00:51:42.620 infrastructure. That's what we're being sold of what hope is or where hope can be found.

00:51:49.380 and so I'd love to just maybe even dive deeper into this feeling of hope because I don't want

00:52:00.200 us to be duped yet again and to hang our hope jacket or you know coat on a long hook so to

00:52:07.220 speak that's a weird metaphor but yeah yeah yeah I'd love to hear your thoughts yeah I think that

00:52:12.840 that's a great point because I also see that right that is like green energy like you know

00:52:18.940 all these initiatives that go and center economic uh the economic field of the humans and that is

00:52:26.740 always risky and that is always also suspicious because it's like are we also going just again

00:52:33.920 with green we're in capitalism you know uh just like a sugarcoat form of capitalism to make us

00:52:42.100 feel better i feel that hope is spiritual i feel that hope goes beyond the material

00:52:49.720 and that is in another dimension i feel that uh it's part of this fugitivity that we were talking

00:52:57.100 about i think that hope is fugitive in the sense that it cannot be encompassed or framed within a

00:53:03.880 material form i think that hope has multiple forms and one of them is deeply how would you say it's

00:53:11.840 almost cameleonic i feel that in the case of the the communities around the chakawa lagoons

00:53:19.380 hope is really tied to the spiritual and to the emotional form of the self but also of the

00:53:28.480 collective self and i think in our case that we are you know living in cities across the world

00:53:34.860 hope has to go beyond the material and we have to again like for me personally i feel that hope for

00:53:43.960 me is just thinking that uh we cannot be living a life like this i don't think that you know

00:53:51.980 colonial capitalist patriarchal system sets all these uh forms of oppression that we can name and

00:53:59.100 that they never stop and that they change with time i don't think that's a way of living so i

00:54:03.900 think that we have to imagine other forms of life and if we imagine I think that's where hope comes

00:54:09.240 from and I think that's why imagination is such crucial for hope because it cannot be again

00:54:15.200 framed or materialized or grounded in a form and I think that sometimes with this imposition as you

00:54:20.940 said that going to the economic field is trying to cut our imagination to say like okay the hope

00:54:27.080 or the hope for environmental you know like solutions come into the economic field but that

00:54:33.880 is such a limited way of thinking and imagining so I think part of this fugitivity is also

00:54:41.280 imagination how can we imagine other forms of life and how can we imagine other forms of

00:54:48.160 relation with the land with the water with our communities with our bodies as territories

00:54:55.740 with care with solidarity with love with tenderness but also with rage because rage is also powerful

00:55:02.560 and with grief and with sadness so i feel that hope has to come from imagination and we have

00:55:08.700 to refuse to be materialized in a form almost contained in a brand and we have to uh reimagine

00:55:18.440 and be capable of being courageous enough to imagine other forms of of living of reproduction

00:55:25.620 of life and life again as in an ontological life but also a spiritual life an affective life

00:55:35.020 a feeling life a felt life a felt thinking life like in spanish we have this word that is called

00:55:42.060 uh that it would be translated as a feeling thinking in the sense that uh when we think

00:55:51.360 we're also feeling and when we're feeling we're also thinking you can feel with the heart

00:55:55.100 you can feel with your brain but you can also think with your heart and i think all these forms

00:56:01.980 of uh escaping and refusing to these materialized forms of hope and materialized forms of hope in

00:56:09.580 regards to environment is the thing that we have to imagine. And I think that a lot of Black and 0.59

00:56:14.320 indigenous populations have had the initiatives of imagining other forms. And I think that it's

00:56:23.000 also our turn to also imagine other forms of living and other forms of hope.

00:56:27.780 oh that's like honey for the heart and it's just reminding me that we need to understand

00:56:44.200 alternative ways of being and living outside of state control yeah and I know this is such a big

00:56:50.820 part of your work so I'm wondering what might it take for alternative ways of being like

00:56:57.280 mutual aid and community support to become common? Yeah, I think that, I mean, I'm very inspired by

00:57:04.940 the Zapatista movement in Mexico. For the people that don't know, they're an indigenous social

00:57:11.700 movement that in January 1st of 1994, they basically said like enough is enough. Indigenous

00:57:20.500 people have been erased and invisibilized in mexico so we're gonna create our own social 0.99

00:57:27.860 organization so basically they're their own we could say nation within the nation state of mexico

00:57:33.160 they have their own government they have their own education they have their own health system

00:57:37.920 they have their own uh economic uh system you know so basically they escaped the state

00:57:46.780 they are autonomous communities and there are hundreds of indigenous communities that are part

00:57:54.560 of the zapatista movement and like those are many other examples in mexico we have cherdan

00:57:59.980 in michoacan that's another community that was defending the forest

00:58:04.860 you know like there were people that were basically cutting all the trees from the forest

00:58:11.020 that were also narcotraffic was involved with the state so it was you know

00:58:16.600 there are complicitness in between the state and narcotraffic that is also huge in mexico

00:58:22.480 and women from that community in michoacan also said enough and they organized and again they

00:58:29.560 became an autonomous community outside of the state so we have all these again i said inspirations

00:58:36.380 of imagining other ways of being,

00:58:39.200 other ways of organizing

00:58:40.200 that are not centered to the state.

00:58:42.240 I think we have to imagine

00:58:43.360 stateless forms of organizing and existing.

00:58:48.200 I think it is possible

00:58:49.140 because they're happening across the world.

00:58:51.520 But we have to first know them

00:58:53.720 and knowing that they exist

00:58:54.840 because that is what gives us hope.

00:58:57.520 But also, you know, as you said,

00:59:00.100 like mutual aid initiatives,

00:59:01.220 I think they're crucial

00:59:02.180 to think other forms of organization,

00:59:05.040 even in our own local communities that go beyond the state or outside of the state i think also

00:59:11.860 other forms of economies such as in mexico we have this word and it means basically like an exchange

00:59:19.560 but it's exchange not of money but if i have grains of you know food i can you can also give

00:59:28.560 me another kind of food or even exchange of labor i don't know i'm gonna take care of your children

00:59:34.900 if you also take care of my children those are things that actually in the community that I was

00:59:39.960 working with they were are doing it like they're mutual they're doing mutual aid initiatives without

00:59:45.400 calling them that way so these are practices that are already happening in many communities that is

00:59:51.300 basically how to create solidarity and how to embrace solidarity when you're facing um

00:59:57.960 the urgencies of oppression and I think that obviously in this world we're in an urgency

01:00:05.220 and it is urgent that we organize but I think that in order to organize first we have to imagine

01:00:11.380 and to have hope and I think that first we have to see that there are other examples to have

01:00:17.000 inspiration but I think that many people are doing it we just have to actually open our eyes

01:00:23.860 open our ears have a deep practice of listening I think that's also something that we need to do a

01:00:30.320 lot listen more as a radical practice because I think that people are doing it but we have to

01:00:37.680 listen and we have to again slow down the power of slowness as a practice to yeah to imagine to

01:00:49.820 feel and to organize as well because that takes a lot of emotional labor to be organizing but I

01:00:57.540 think that once you are like in this other time that you're building with others that goes outside

01:01:03.700 of the modern time that's when you have time to imagine and to create other forms of

01:01:09.000 of living of being outside of the state outside of colonial legacies and also I think that just

01:01:16.120 by being and also centering joy for example i mean with all this grief and with all these uh

01:01:22.520 i mean and i i also want to say that when you're going through grief it doesn't mean that you're

01:01:28.060 only living grief like there are many emotions that can be co-existent in your own body and

01:01:32.880 in the collective body social body so i feel that also knowing that grief does not exclude joy

01:01:40.220 but sometimes it even nourish it and they are mutual you know they mutually nourish each other

01:01:46.840 I think that that is also powerful because I think in this world we also have to center joy and

01:01:53.340 pleasure and that is something that is also fugitive to these times and to this world and

01:02:00.400 to the state and I think that when we center pleasure and joy in our lives in our bodies

01:02:07.120 in our social bodies, meaning communities, and a pleasure and joy with the land and the

01:02:13.560 water.

01:02:13.900 When we have this sensual relationship with the environment, I remember that Kim Talber,

01:02:24.340 she talks about being polyamorous also in regards to plants, to trees, to nature.

01:02:31.040 when we have these also sensual practices in our everyday life that is also going outside of the

01:02:38.420 state because they're not controlling our bodies you know like no one can control our imagination

01:02:44.320 our feelings our sensual selves and our joy and i think to also embrace that and not letting it go

01:02:50.980 is a huge part of hope and organizing and and building new forms of being and unexisting

01:02:59.720 thank you so much for closing us out with those words i think that there's so much

01:03:11.060 to overwhelm us and to feel kind of stifled by but to remember how to come back to ourselves

01:03:21.320 and to our community and to the earth

01:03:23.320 and believe that another way is possible

01:03:28.880 and put that into action

01:03:30.620 because we believe it

01:03:32.620 and we have community around us

01:03:34.420 who are willing to do the hard, beautiful work with us

01:03:37.640 and together is really, yeah,

01:03:40.620 I'm really happy to be closing on that.

01:03:43.440 But before we completely close this conversation,

01:03:46.320 if there's anything else that you would like to add,

01:03:48.880 please take the floor.

01:03:51.320 Thank you. Yeah, I would just say that, well, first of all, thank you for having me here. I think it was a beautiful conversation. And just that, yeah, that we open our eyes around that, also pay attention to what is happening in Black, Indigenous, Native American territories, that we communicate with local organizations.

01:04:14.260 that we and that yeah like I just invite everyone to imagine other forms of being of existing outside

01:04:23.920 of the state outside of all these colonial binaries even in gender and sexuality and also

01:04:30.940 in regards to joy and pleasure and imagination and that we need that and that we need more

01:04:36.220 mutual aid we need community we need a collective life and that we need to keep defending life

01:04:43.000 outside of a materialized form

01:04:45.320 that has been imposed to us.

01:04:49.900 Oh, Yawali, thank you so much

01:04:51.960 for spending this time with us today.

01:04:54.360 Thank you so much for inviting me, Ayana.

01:04:58.520 Thank you for listening to this episode

01:05:00.980 of For the Wild podcast.

01:05:03.300 The music you heard today

01:05:05.040 is by Eliza Eden,

01:05:07.220 Fabian Almazan Trio,

01:05:08.820 and Paloma.

01:05:10.300 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Allie Constantine, Erica Akra, Emily Guerra, and Julia Jackson.

For The Wild - September 28, 2022

YOALLI RODRIGUEZ on Grief as an Ontological Form of Time ⧸306

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