In the second episode of our More than Human webinar series, Juana Vera Delgado, will tell us about the rediscovery of her water-based identity made during her PhD journey. As a descendant of the Wari culture, she could understand why water was and is seen as a feminine creator divinity of Life on the earth. This belief to see water as a living entity persists in many communities, especially in the Andes and the Amazon, and forms the basis of the political, social and religious resistance to colonial imposition.
Date: 15th October 2024
Time: 12 pm GMT
Juana is a mestiza from the Andes of Apurimac in Peru, whose indigenous origins date back to the time of a pre-Inca culture called Wari. Like very few of the girls in her community, she was lucky enough to study agricultural engineering, but to do this she has to migrate far away from her community to the big city (Lima). Her concern for integrating a more social and inclusive approach in the management of water, motivated her to pursue a PhD study. By engaging in this adventure, she rediscovered her water culture identity.
For the Waris, like for the rest of the pre-Inca cultures, water was a feminine creator divinity of Life on the earth; so, the Waris traced the origins of their ancestors to different sources of water: the sea, rivers, lagoons, and springs. As expected, the political, religious, social and economic organization of these cultures was based on the worship and management of water, which allowed them to develop harmoniously in all aspects of life, with social and gender inclusion. This belief -to see water as a living entity- and practices persists in many communities, especially in the Andes and the Amazon, even though more than 500 years of colonialism have tried to eradicate them. Based on this rediscovery, Juana filmed the water rituals in the Colca Valley, Arequipa.
Presently Juana works for Global Forest Coalition (GFC) as a Senior gender and environmental justice advisor. GFC is a feminist international coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples organizations defending the climate justice and the rights of forest peoples.