Building Blocks of Feminist Foreign Policy: Acuerpar
Image: Luna EPF
In a world built on colonial foundations using the template of the colonizer, historical and collective trauma run deep. That there has been no accountability or justice for such harm has meant that such harm continues unfettered – even if in different forms. These dynamics underpin engagements across the “global north” and “global south,” with very little attempt to introspect on how power continues to be held, used, and reproduced. These dynamics also constitute the foundation on which wealthy and institutionally white states are able to build “feminist foreign policies,” which continue to make projects out of people, all under the label of “feminist.”
We see campaign after campaign being churned out by white women, instrumentalizing the narratives of women of colour to protect them from men of colour. Never mind that the governments of these white women’s nations normalize the same gender apartheid within and beyond their territories – and must be the key actors to be held accountable for these realities. Within these spaces, these efforts in the name of feminist foreign policy, as feminist activist and gender consultant Leila Billing noted, "instrumentalize people's trauma for fundraising and advocacy purposes," often evoking responses of "empathy infused with power relations." The narrative of the racialized woman is consistently weaponized to keep a racial division alive. The civilized colonizer continues to dictate standards to the uncivilized other – standards it neither conforms nor intends to conform to, by itself.
Much of this is rooted in claims of “solidarity” and “empathy.” As Miriam Miranda, leader of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), noted, solidarity is often “reduced to disembodied expressions of empathy,” that “keep people busy expressing themselves online, imagining themselves in another’s place, while avoiding putting their bodies in action.” Paul Bloom, author of Against Empathy, reflected on how empathy is one of the leading “motivators of inequality and immorality in society,” and called it a “capricious and irrational emotion” that appeals to our narrow prejudices and even leads to cruelty. In her post, gender activist Leila Billing mindfully reflects on how “empathy” is colonial and recommends a shift to acuerpar, a learning she drew from the work of Mayan community feminist and activist Lorena Cabnal.
Understanding Acuerpar
The term acuerpar was conceptualized by Indigenous Feminists in Central America, where it emerged at a feminist encampment in Honduras that was protesting in demand for justice for the murder of Lenca organizer, Berta Caceres. During the trial of the military intelligence officer accused of murdering Berta, Gladys Tzul Tzul, Guatemalan sociologist and expert witness, used the term “territorial feminicide” to describe how Berta’s murder was not just an individual crime but rather a crime against the community life of the Lenca people. Murdering Berta, according to Gladys, was intended to dispossess the Lenca people of their material and spiritual possibilities of life. The group of women who demanded justice for Berta also recognized how Berta's death represented both the occupation of their lands and perpetration of large-scale violence on women by extractive industries, much like their European and US imperialistic predecessors.
Acuerpar means to “embody.” It is a political act of showing up, in person, for the fight. It is an act of giving physicality to the fight that puts pressure on institutions, while bringing us together to allow us to feel supported, heard, and understood. It helps us lean on each other to gather strength and vigour. As Lorena Cabnal notes, “Acuerpamiento or acuerpar [refers to] the personal and collective action wherein our bodies, outraged by the injustices experienced by other bodies, self-convene to provide themselves with political energy. [This act of gathering] generates affective and spiritual energies. It provides us with closeness and collective indignation but also revitalization and new strength, so that we may recover joy without losing indignation.”
Acuerpar invites us to reflect on how empathy stops short because of its inherent power dynamics. Empathy does not invite a reflection on our power and privilege to “imagine” another’s challenges and fictitiously put ourselves in their shoes. Empathy does not invite a reflection on how we have the power and privilege to step out of the story or turn off a social media post that triggers us while those whose life stories it tells continue to audition for our attention. Empathy comes with a ceiling that lets us think that our “show of solidarity” is inherently woven with the label of choice we pick for ourselves without interrogating coloniality, racism, casteism, and capitalism. As Leila explains, white feminism has “mobilised ideas of empathy in order to smooth over horrific inequalities,” and “enables us to deny any complicity with the root causes of people’s suffering.”
Learning from Acuerpar while Imagining Feminist Foreign Policies
In spaces where Feminist Foreign Policies have been created by states, we see the rampant instrumentalization of stories of women. A wealthy state claims credit for the peacebuilding efforts of grassroot women in the face of conflict without acknowledging the historical role it has (and its wealthy peer nations have) played enabling that conflict. In these spaces, we see brazen displays of necropolitics where the life of the other matters very little. A wealthy state appropriates the labour of indigenous women in addressing climate change without recognizing how its institutions are embroidered into the soil of indigenous communities, displacing and destroying them in the process. In these spaces, empathy is weaponized to enable power under, where historical trauma is instrumentalized to keep a genocide alive. A wealthy state sends shipment after shipment of weapons while calling its foreign policy feminist.
In spaces where civil society reflects on, makes the case for, and engages with the idea of Feminist Foreign Policies, institutional whiteness and racism continue to dominate. When held accountable, DARVO responses centring white women’s vulnerabilities to violence are casually thrown at those that step up to speak up. Indigenous and majority world feminist movements and collectives have historically worked in these spaces: Resisting colonial power, preventing the erasure of their communities, practicing food sovereignty to protect their lands while feeding their communities, and establishing ways of being and doing that move away from militarized violence.
What might it mean to learn from acuerpar in reimagining feminist foreign policies?
Maria Jose Mendez explains:
“…acuerpar indexes a form of political participation that invites us to put our shoes together with those of others and engage our bodies in remaking the world through mutual aid. Centering acuerpar in feminist praxis moves us away from colonizing models of coalition building that are top-down, erase difference, and neglect interdependence between human and nonhuman beings. The “us” invoked here includes all those concerned with creating worlds that are hospitable to the ways of being and knowing that intersectional structures of domination render disposable.”
In simplest terms, Acuerpar is embodiment. In a Feminist Foreign Policy context, it invites us to interrogate how policies that call themselves feminist prioritize actions that continue coloniality rather than to level the differences and share power. It invites us to see how in normalizing rights, representation, and resources, we are not moving beyond colonial frameworks that keep wealth, resources, and participatory freedom concentrated in the hands of a few. It is an invitation to collective work, to show up fully, in embodiment. In Lorena Cabnal’s words, it “generates affective and spiritual energies that transgress borders and imposed time,” and offers us closeness, collective outrage, and revitalization, along with the strength and resilience to regain joy without losing our outrage. It shows us a way to keep our resources from being coopted by the master’s house, to become another one of its tools.
It goes without saying that care must be taken not to appropriate the concept, the wisdom it stands for, and the historical practice to make it another master’s tool or a buzzword. Care must be taken not to allow it to become another clarion call for whiteness to hide its disinterest in dismantling colonialism. It is inherently political, inherently collective, inherently embodied.
References
Cabnal, L. (2010). “Acercamiento a la construcción de la propuesta de pensamiento epistémico de las mujeres indígenas feministas comunitarias de Abya Yala” [Approach to the construction of an epistemic thought proposal by Indigenous communitarian feminist women from Abya Ayala]. In Feminismos diversos: El feminismo comunitario [Diverse feminisms: Communitarian feminism], edited by Asociación para la cooperación con el Sur [Association for co-operation with the South]. Ciudad de Guatemala: ACSUR-Las Segovias.
Méndez, M. J. (2023). Acuerpar: the decolonial feminist call for embodied solidarity. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 49(1), 37-61. (Read)
Indiegraf. (n.d.). “Three Latin American Activism Terms for your Journalism.” (Read)
Méndez, M. J. (2018). “‘The River Told Me’: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 29(1):7–24.
This article draws from the wisdom, practices, and life work of Indigenous groups. While educating ourselves on Indigenous worldviews is important, we understand that our actions can also contribute to and enable appropriation. As part of our ongoing attempts at practicing accountability, we invite readers to consider making a donation to COPINH or MILPAH any other Lenca people’s organizations or initiatives to support the lives and work of people from the Lenca community.
