Y Que del Espíritu (And What of the Spirit): Nopaliando as Latinx Feminist Ecological Rhetoric

The prickly pear cactus (nopal) invites scholars to critically attend to racial geographies and spiritual-material praxis through ecological relationality with more-than-human-kin. Nopaliando, via Latinx feminist ecological rhetoric, is one version of this methodology. Nopaliando allows Latinx rhetorical scholars to productively emphasize the spatial dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality that co-constitute any engagement with land, animal, and more-than-human kin. Much like the ways nopales themselves have traveled and been translated across the planet, as a Latinx feminist ecological rhetoric, nopaliando enhances understandings of the interconnected yet divergent relationships among rhetoric, ecologies, and ancestral wisdom.