Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 1999

Abstract

In writing this essay I will begin what I am certain will be a long, complex process of answering the question of who is my mother. I will develop the work in three parts, corresponding to critical parts of the rediscovery process. In Part II, this essay probes cultural links that are formative and transformative of our personhood, which define and determine how we interact with the various and varied communities through which we take daily voyages. I use narrative to locate myself in the context of knowing and discovering the myriad cultures in which I define my mothers. This part underscores the importance of piercing our self-conceptions and identifications as a means of understanding our own realities. Part HI explores ways that certain identities have been erased or colonized and how law and religion have played central roles in creating and justifying cycles of domination and subordination. Here the essay reveals the brutal colonization and fast extermination of the poblaci6n indocubana by the Spaniards as a location for the decimation of a peoples, their culture, history and society. Following the presentation of the indocubanalo experience, this section briefly explains how the philosophical/legal developments of the time provided a sorry justification for the genocide of native peoples that occurred not only in Cuba but throughout the Americas and which continues today. Part IV, using the personal (and historical) discoveries presented in Parts II & III, articulates the challenges in building coalitions in a feminist anti-subordination project. It also proposes LCRF as a site for the deployment of such a necessary enterprise and for the re/membering and transforming of identities. This discussion sets the course for the work that lies ahead in the process that will promote all women's full personhood and human flourishing. I conclude that a critically reformed human rights framework will facilitate the process of unearthing the buried cultural, historic, social, and human erasures of hegemony, colonialism and patriarchy. It will map LCRF theory into a practice that clears the path to every person's full enjoyment of the dignity of the human spirit.

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