La obra me curó : A Case Study of Las Curanderas Teatro and Their Theater Healing Praxis in Guatemala

This article examines how Maya Kaqchikel women from Iximulew (Guatemala) conceptualize and respond to gender-based violence through a theater-making praxis rooted in ancestral healing traditions. Focusing on Las Curanderas Teatro as a case study, I theorize performing healing as an embodied practice that integrates theater making with ancestral medicinal knowledge to confront patriarchal violence shaped by the coloniality of gender and the pedagogies of cruelty. I trace this praxis in two interconnected ways: first, through performance, where curanderas and limpias are invoked to address individual and collective wounds; and second, through a theater-making methodology grounded in Indigenous healing systems. This methodology unfolds in three cyclical stages: identification of the wound(s), release and transformation, and restoration of life. Drawing on seven semistructured interviews with Las Curanderas Teatro members and multisited feminist ethnographic research (2019–2020), I argue that performing healing constitutes Indigenous women’s resurgence of cultural memory and spiritual activism—both deeply political. Through embodied ancestral knowledge and collective care, Las Curanderas Teatro advances decolonial feminist interventions that insist on healing a deeply wounded social body produced by intersecting forms of gender-based violence.