For Tatiana
I received a text message from a companera on 13/04/2021 asking me if I was available for a quick call. The tone of the message coupled with the fact that I am not in regular contact with her gave me pause. I responded, “sure but I hope it is not intense”. The never ending cycles of COVID-19 induced lockdowns in London and a complex work environment have led me to become more intentional about protecting my psychic energy. She responded that she had some sad news to share so I called her immediately. The news — Tatiana Cordero Velasquez, the director of Urgent Action Fund Latin America is dead.
I speak of death often, which means that I come across as being nonchalant about death. This is how I cope with mortality. I disrespect death sufficiently so that it ceases to have a grip on how I occupy the present. The news of Tatiana’s death shook me. I did not know Tatiana well but I encountered her several times through various professional assignments. In those encounters, I often said to Tatiana that I could listen to her for hours. She had a deeply calming effect on a room and always insisted on centring the politics of care. The invocation of care was not only about the political work that UAF Latin America did but also a political ethos she foregrounded as important to how we should all embody spaces.
In one meeting, she spoke about energy and how this was reflected in how we acknowledge and manage conflict with care. Tatiana was not requiring people to be “nice”, rather she was asking us to reflect on how our words and speech acts made visible the invisible and unspoken intentions we carried into spaces. It is these intentions that were mirrored in our tone and engagements with each other, which in turn made us experience spaces as difficult.
A politics of care in this context would be rooted in trust. That trust had to be based on a shared feminist vision of the world we wanted to build. If we trusted each others political visions enough, then how we worked through conflicts would be guided by sustaining those relationships because they were not disposable. Tatiana was inviting us to be present. To embrace the power of political feminist friendships powered by the collective work for freedom rather than the politics of institutional survival. In a world in which we consistently grapple with what it means to sustain feminist spaces that centre collective care, I can argue I met someone who lived it and led with this ethos.
Tatiana consistently reminded us about grounding our freedom work on indigenous knowledge systems that are deeply expansive and generative. Well before concepts were named and written about, they were practiced and embodied by indigenous communities and activists.
The last time I saw Tatiana was in a 2019 meeting UAF LAC convened in Mexico. The meeting was filled with spontaneous dance, songs, and carefully curated rituals to ground the group. Holding the mental and physical wellbeing of the group as an essential scaffolding for a meeting that was working through complex and difficult questions is evidence of what it means to be purposeful about mind, heart and body.
At this conference, Tatiana insisted on giving me a conference gift to take back to a companera based in England who could not travel to Mexico. She said; “maybe this will eventually force both of you to meet”. As urban life would have it, the conference gift reached its destination via post. Lucia, you and I must meet soon to honour Tatiana’s wish.
Go well Tatiana. Nind gi kwe.