Spring gives way to summer. May turns to June. In Chiapas, the rains begin to arrive and the earth awakens once again.
As feminist thinker Silvia Federici has argued, the work of sustaining life is the foundation of every society. In Chiapas, we see that truth every day.
Before there can be a movement, there must be care. Before there can be resistance, there must be someone preparing food, teaching a child, healing a neighbor, tending a garden, organizing a gathering, or defending a territory.
These acts rarely make headlines, yet they make everything else possible.
This month, we dedicate our newsletter to the women who sustain life. To mothers and grandmothers. To educators and healers. To organizers and defenders of territory. To the families of the missing and murdered, and to the searching mothers who refuse to stop looking for their loved ones. To the women who continue building life in the face of adversity.
We dedicate it to those who sow dignity every day.
Weaving Words: Literacy for the Lives of Women in the Highlands of Chiapas
This year, we have held two literacy workshops with women from approximately 35 communities in the Highlands of Chiapas.
Before the workshop, the morning mist begins to lift from the football field. Inside the assembly space, the voices of women speaking Tseltal fill the air. Laughter echoes between the walls as participants gather to continue a process that is about much more than learning to read and write.
Through words drawn from their daily lives, the women explore sounds, syllables, objects, and actions. A sound here. A word there. A noun here. A verb there. Little by little, they discover new tools for naming the world around them, sharing their ideas, and strengthening their participation within their families and communities.
One woman recognizes a word she has seen before. Another helps her compañera understand an exercise. Confidence grows with every activity, every word read, and every sentence built collectively.
We often forget what it felt like to learn to read. Here, the thrill of discovery is palpable.
Each woman carries that discovery into her home, her community, her world. Later, she may sit beside her child and recognize a word in a homework assignment. She may begin writing her own ideas. She may discover new ways to participate in community life.
Each lesson begets new possibilities. Like seeds gathered for planting, curiosity grows and confidence spreads.
Thanks to supporters like you, women continue participating in literacy processes rooted in their own language, culture, and experiences. Each step they take strengthens not only an individual, but also families, communities, and future generations.
Community Health: Knowledge that Heals
During this period, we held one community health workshop with women from the coastal region of Chiapas. Following the workshop, the compañeras have continued visiting neighboring communities, and sharing that knowledge, putting what they have learned into practice. The goal is to strengthen communities’ ability to care for their own health by reclaiming local knowledge and building collective alternatives for well-being.
Hundreds of miles away from the highlands, on the coast of Chiapas, another form of care is taking shape.
At dawn, before the heat rises, a woman crouches down in the understory of the savannah oaks. She pokes her machete into the boggy soil at the base of a plant. She grabs low on the stalk, pulling and prying until the roots come loose. She has been harvesting in this same spot since she was a child, tagging along at her grandmother’s knees.
Back home, she prepares tinctures, syrups, and remedies that help keep her family healthy. Knowledge like this is not found in textbooks. It is passed from hand to hand, generation to generation.
Today, that knowledge is also being strengthened collectively. Community health promoters share remedies, techniques, lessons learned, successes, and challenges. Together they strengthen the networks of care that sustain their communities.
More than just medicine, these gatherings are spaces of mutual support, collective learning, and community resilience.
Your support helps women continue building local systems of health grounded in traditional knowledge, community participation, and collective care.
Women’s Assembly: The Fabric of Solidarity and Strength
This spring, more than 30 women from across Chiapas gathered at CIDECI–Unitierra in San Cristóbal de Las Casas to share experiences, strengthen relationships, and continue building collective responses to the challenges facing their communities. Every six months women from the highlands, the jungle, and the coast come together to exchange knowledge, analyze their realities, and imagine new possibilities.
They share food, stories, laughter, worries, and hope.
They organize.
They learn.
They heal.
They affirm that their collective strength is much greater than the sum of their individual abilities.
Holding space.
Building relationships.
Sharing knowledge.
Strengthening analysis.
Weaving networks of solidarity.
Photo by Colectivo Ansetik Ts’unun.
This is the slow and patient work that makes long-term change possible.
Thanks to the support of our donor community, we were able to contribute to transportation costs, helping compañeras travel from their communities across Chiapas to CIDECI–Unitierra. For many women, attending these gatherings requires hours of travel and significant economic sacrifice. Your support helped make it possible for women from different territories to come together, learn from one another, strengthen their relationships, and continue building the networks that sustain their collective work.
Sometimes, supporting a movement begins with something as simple as making it possible for people to gather.
Women Who Sustain Life
Though they live in different territories, the women featured in these stories share something in common. They sustain life. Whether they are learning to read and write, sharing community health knowledge, organizing gatherings, defending their territories, or caring for their families, they are doing the everyday work that allows communities to flourish.
These are the kinds of labor that rarely make headlines, yet they make everything else possible.
At Schools for Chiapas, we are honored to accompany these processes and to support initiatives that emerge directly from the communities themselves. Every day, we are inspired by the wisdom, generosity, courage, and perseverance of the women we walk alongside. We are also deeply grateful to every person who helps make this work possible.
Your solidarity does more than fund workshops, gatherings, or materials. It helps strengthen networks of care, shared knowledge, and community-led processes that continue growing long after a workshop or meeting has ended. Like the first rains of the season, your support helps the seeds planted within communities find the conditions they need to grow.
Together, we are investing in something profoundly simple and profoundly powerful:
women sharing knowledge,
communities caring for one another,
and future generations inheriting stronger, healthier, and more organized communities.
Thank you for walking alongside us.
By sharing information, participating in calls to action, making a donation, or making a purchase from our solidarity store, your support makes this possible.
As always, we thank you for all that you do.
