From Enough to Abundance: To My Black Brothers & Sisters from a (decolonizing) Indigenous Latina
It is not enough for me to tell you how brokenhearted I am
It is not enough for me to know that your liberation is also my liberation
To move to abundance, I will hold at the forefront of my heart the wisdom of our ancient cultures and will conjure the place where our ancestors meet and bring forward loving memory
It is not enough for me to tell you that I see and honor your full humanity and that I can not imagine the anger and pain you feel right now
It is not enough for you to know that I will challenge anti blackness in every space and with all people – especially with my own
To move to abundance, when we meet I will remember In Lak’ech/ Ubuntu … you are the other me
It is not enough for you to know that I will always see, listen and believe you, especially in moments when the world scapegoats you
It is not enough to reassure you that your passion in uplifting the injustice on black people does not make my people’s struggle invisible
To move to abundance, I commit to fight for your children as fiercely as I fight for my own, because indeed our children’s innocence is worth fighting for
It is not enough for me to lift up and make visible the African legacy present in Latin America and push for black Latin Americans to be included
It is not enough for you to know that as I fight for reparations for indigenous communities in the Americas, I will also fight for reparations for all formerly enslaved Africans
To move to abundance, I will stand and walk with you through the fire, knowing when to follow and when to lead
It has been 524 years since this land, my land, began to be colonized, and 324 years since the first African was brought to this land enslaved
And this country is an infant at 238 years old, when we hold thousands and thousands of years of our people’s collective knowledge
We have enough time to turn this around but only if we turn from the US to a We
