Mujeres del Agua

In 2023 I led a participatory workshop and exhibit titled Mujeres del Agua in Monterrey Mexico that explored the effects of the local water crisis, the inherent links to a non-polluting transportation system and mobility at large.

Centering female identified participants as decision makers and authors, the discussions began with personal stories, moving into visual and performative expressions, culminating in the written manifesto and a public exhibit.

Set in the most public of public spaces at LAB NL, the series is not confined to night meetings, chat rooms, or designated to a one day a year protest. The series brings female identified participants into a post-apocalyptic future during broad daylight, flipping the normative patriarchal role by situating the participants as agents of their own change.

Together with the artist, the participant collaborators are asked to name needs, desires, and definitions regarding clean air and water as a living transnational manifesto for the 21st century.

In 2024, the Mujeres del Agua manifesto was published in English and French, and was celebrated through personal and group readings in Monterrey Mexico, Portland Oregon, and Montreal Canada.

This manifesto was born from a quest to articulate the issues experienced by women during the recent water crisis in the state of Nuevo León. The result is a manifesto composed by perspectives of women citizens whose objective is to make visible the female experience, increasing their incidence within the socio-political decision making, promoting tangible changes regarding water and the environment. The manifesto is intended to be replicable in different socioeconomic, geographic and cultural contexts in order to increase the number of voices and knowledge. We recognize that we are located in ancestral lands marked to this day by colonialism, racism, capitalism and patriarchy, among other systems of oppression.

We consider essential the presence of women and people identified as women in the decisions of sustainability, conservation and health of water, air and the environment. We demand that the physical and mental health of women and menstruating women be considered in socio-political and environmental decision-making, taking into account menstruation, breastfeeding, abortion and pregnancy. Housework is part of the workforce and should be legitimized as such. We demand that water be distributed in an equitable and sustainable manner. We seek to generate alternatives and changes with respect to the system of water polluting waste from domestic to industrial. We demand that the necessary education on water care be provided at all stages, beginning with infancy.

We believe that we must rethink our relationship with water, starting with the utilitarian vocabulary we assign to it, to the use we make of it in our lives.

We demand that water be treated not as a resource, but as a living entity that inhabits our environment, thus assigning it the following rights:

1) Right to life and respect for its existence.

2) Respect for the maintenance and regeneration of its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.

3) Right to restoration.

WE DEMAND AN ECOCENTRIC FUTURE!

This is a living and constantly evolving document.